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T h e Cambridge History of Latin American Literature VOLUME 2

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature Edited by Roberto G o n z á l e z Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker

The Cambridge

History of Latin American

Literature

is by far the most comprehen

sive and authoritative w o r k of its kind ever written. Its three volumes cover the whole sweep of Latin American literature (including Brazilian) from pre-Columbian times to the present, and contain chapters on Latin American writing in the US. O v e r forty specialists in North America, Latin America, and Britain have contributed to what is not only the most reliable, up-to-date, and convenient reference w o r k on its subject, but also a set of books containing innovative approaches and fresh research that will expand and animate the field for years to come. T h e History is unique in its thorough coverage of previously neglected areas, in its detailed discussion of countless writers in various genres, and in its inclusion of extensive annotated bibliographies. Volume i begins with pre-Columbian traditions and their first contact with European culture, continuing through to the end of the nineteenth century. N e w W o r l d historiography, epic poetry, theatre, the novel, and the essay form are among the areas covered in this comprehensive and authoritative treatment. Volume 2 provides coverage of all genres from the end of the nineteenth century up to Garcia M a r q u e z ' s One Hundred

Years of Solitude and beyond to 1990, thus including

discussion of Spanish American literature's best-known w o r k s . T h e novel, poetry, autobiographical narrative, the short story, Afro-Hispanic American literature, theatre, and Chicano literature are among the areas treated in this wide-ranging volume. Volume

3 is devoted partly to the history of Brazilian literature, from the earliest

writing through the colonial period and the Portuguese-language traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and partly also to an extensive bibliographical section in which annotated reading lists relating to the chapters in all three volumes of The Cambridge

History of Latin American Literature are presented. These bibliogra

phies are a unique feature of the History,

further enhancing its immense value as a

reference w o r k .


Contents of the other t w o volumes Volume

i: Discovery

to

Modernism

List of contributors; General preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction to Volume

i;

i . A brief history of the history of Spanish American literature; 2. Cultures in contact: Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the European written tradition; 3. T h e first fifty years of Hispanic N e w W o r l d historiography: the Caribbean, M e x i c o , and Central America; 4. Historians of the Conquest and Colonization of the N e w W o r l d : 1550-1620; 5. Historians of the colonial period: 1620-1700; 6. Colonial lyric; 7. Epic poetry; 8. Spanish American theatre of the colonial period; 9. Viceregal culture; 10. T h e eighteenth century: narrative forms, scholarship, and learning; 1 1 . Lyric poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; 12. Spanish American theatre of the eighteenth century; 13. T h e nineteenth-century Spanish American novel; 14. T h e brief narrative in Spanish America: 1 8 3 5 - 1 9 1 5 ; 1 5 . T h e Spanish American theatre of the nineteenth century; 16. T h e essay in Spanish South America: 1800 to Modernismo;

17. T h e essay

of nineteenth-century M e x i c o , Central America, and the Caribbean; 18. T h e G a u c h o genre; Index Volume 3: Brazilian Literature;

Bibliographies

List of contributors; General preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction to Volume

3;

1. T h e literary historiography of Brazil; 2. Colonial Brazilian literature; 3. Brazilian poetry from the 1830s to the 1880s; 4. Brazilian poetry from 1878 to 1902; 5. T h e Brazilian theatre before 1900; 6. Brazilian fiction from 1800 to 1855; 7. T h e Brazilian novel from 1850 to 1900; 8. Brazilian fiction from 1900 to 1945; 9. Brazilian prose from 1940 to 1980; 10. T h e Brazilian short story; 1 1 . Brazilian poetry from 1900 to 1922; 12. Brazilian poetry from Modernism to the present; 13. T h e Brazilian theatre in the twentieth century; 14. Brazilian popular literature (the literatura

de

cordel);

15. Literary criticism in Brazil; 16. T h e essay: architects of Brazilian national identity; 17. T h e Brazilian and the Spanish American literary traditions: a contrastive view; B I B L I O G R A P H I E S : 1. General bibliography; 2. Bibliographies to Volume graphies to Volume 2; Bibliographies to Volume 3; Index


1 ; Biblio

The Cambridge History of Latin American

Literature

VpLUME 2:

The Twentieth Century Edited by

Roberto González Echevarría Yale

University

and Enrique Pupo-Walker Vanderbilt

University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS


PUBLISHED B Y T H E PRESS S Y N D I C A T E OF THE UNIVERSITY OF C A M B R I D G E T h e Pitt Building, T r u m p i n g t o n Street, Cambridge, U n i t e d K i n g d o m CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS T h e Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2 R U , U K 3 2 A v e n u e o f the Americas, N e w York, N Y 1 0 0 1 3 - 2 4 7 3 , U S A 4 7 7 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, V I C 3 2 0 7 , Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 1 3 , 2 8 0 1 4 M a d r i d , Spain D o c k House, T h e Waterfront, Cape T o w n , 8 0 0 1 , South Africa http://www.cambridge.org Information on this title: w w w . c a m b r i d g e . o r g / 9 7 8 0 5 2 1 3 4 0 7 0 0 © Cambridge University Press 1996 T h i s book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction o f any part may take place without the written permission o f Cambridge University Press. First published 1996 Fourth printing 2006 Printed in the U n i t e d K i n g d o m at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication

Library

data

T h e Cambridge history of Latin American literature / e d i t e d b y Roberto G o n z a lez Echevarria and Enriue Pupo-Walker. p. cm. Contents: v. 1. Discovery to M o d e r n i s m - v. 2 . T h e twentieth century - v. 3 . Brazilian literature; bibliographies. I S B N 0 5 2 1 3 4 0 6 9 1 (v. 1). - I S B N 0 5 2 1 3 4 0 7 0 5 (v. 2 . ) . ISBN 0 521 4 1 0 3 5 5 (v. 3).

1. Latin American literature-History and critcism. 1. G o n z a lez Echevarria, Roberto. II. Pupo-Walker, Enrique. PQ708.MC35 1995 860.9'8 - d c 2 0 93-37750 C I P ISBN-13 978-0-521-34070-0 ISBN-10 0-521-34070-5

hardback hardback


Contents

List of

contributors

General

preface

page ix XI

Acknowledgments Introduction

xix

to Volume

2

i

Modernist poetry Cathy L. Jrade

7

Modernist prose Aníbal Gonzalez T h e Vanguardia

69 and its implications

Hugo J. Verani T h e literature of

114 Indigenismo

René Prieto

138

Afro-Hispanic American literature Vera M. Kutzinski

164

T h e criollista novel Carlos J. Alonso

195

T h e novel of the M e x i c a n Revolution John Rutherford T h e Spanish American novel from 1950 to 1975 Randolph D. Pope T h e Spanish American novel: recent developments, 1975 to 1990 Gustavo Pellón Spanish American poetry from 1922 to 1975

213 226 279

José Quiroga

303

T h e modern essay in Spanish America José Miguel Oviedo

365


LIST OF

12

CONTENTS

Literary criticism in Spanish America Aníbal González

13

425

T h e autobiographical narrative Sylvia Molloy

14

458

T h e twentieth-century short story in Spanish America Daniel Balderston

15

465

Spanish American theatre in the twentieth century Sandra M. Cypess

16

497

Latin American (Hispanic Caribbean) literature written in the United States William Luis

17

526

Chicano literature Luis Leal and Manuel

M. Martin-Rodriguez

Index

557 587

viii Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Contributors

Carlos J. A l o n s o , Emory University Daniel Balderston, Tulane University Sandra M . Cypess, University of M a r y l a n d Anibal G o n z a l e z , Pennsylvania State University Cathy L. Jrade, Vanderbilt University Vera M . Kutzinski, Y a l e University Luis Leal, University of California, Santa Barbara William Luis, Vanderbilt University M a n u e l M . Martin-Rodriguez, Y a l e University Sylvia M o l l o y , N e w Y o r k University José M i g u e l O v i e d o , University of Pennsylvania G u s t a v o Pellón, University of Virginia Randolph D . Pope, Washington University René Prieto, Southern Methodist University José Q u i r o g a , T h e George Washington University John Rutherford, Queen's College, O x f o r d University H u g o J. Verani, University of California, Davis

IX



General preface

In 1893, the r e n o w n e d Spanish critic and historian M a r c e l i n o M e n é n d e z y Pelayo published his vastly influential Antología de la poesía hispano americana^ not only the first history of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry, but truly the first history of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. T h e Antología appeared just as Modernismo, the first poetic movement developed in Spanish A m e r i c a , w a s achieving its greatest acclaim throughout the Hispanic w o r l d . W i t h Modernismo Spanish A m e r i c a n literature came of age, while the Antología, compiled and prefaced by the most authoritative critic of the language, gave it institutional substance and academic respectability. T h e present History appears in the w a k e of the most remarkable period of expansion and international recognition ever enjoyed by Latin A m e r i c a n literature. T h e consolidation of Latin A m e r i c a n literature as an academic discipline and a recognized category in the w o r l d b o o k market w a s made possible by the achievements of writers as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Julio C o r t á z a r , J o á o G u i m a r a e s R o s a , José L e z a m a L i m a , Gabriel G a r c í a M á r q u e z , O c t a v i o Paz, M a r i o V a r g a s Llosa, and many others. G a r c í a M á r q u e z and Paz attained the ultimate recognition, the N o b e l Prize. W i t h o u t the distinction and accomplishments of these writers, the public at large, not to mention publishing houses and universities throughout the w o r l d , w o u l d have continued to treat Latin A m e r i c a n literary production as an appendix to Spanish literature, dependent on someone like M e n é n d e z y Pelayo for legitimation. It is to them t o o that this History o w e s its existence. Modernismo gave Latin A m e r i c a a place in the Spanish-language literary w o r l d ; writers like the ones mentioned a b o v e placed it at the center of w o r l d literature. Latin A m e r i c a n literature today enjoys a truly international currency. Latin A m e r i c a n novelists in particular are read and imitated not only in the W e s t but throughout the w o r l d . For instance, L e o Ou-fan-Lee, a professor of Chinese literature at the University of C h i c a g o , has written recently that Latin A m e r i c a n writers "now exert a powerful impact on 7

XI


GENERAL

PREFACE

many y o u n g Chinese writers". A s recently as thirty years ago such a statement w o u l d have been unthinkable. G i v e n its universal reach and appeal, it is perhaps appropriate that this History should be the effort of a group of scholars w o r k i n g in the United States, England, and continental Europe, as well as in Latin A m e r i c a . Latin A m e r i c a n literature is today at the pinnacle of the international literary movements that began w i t h the A v a n t - G a r d e in the twenties. T h o s e movements, as well as their after math, are cosmopolitan in essence. T h e History attempts to take full advantage of its collective and international cast, while at the same time aiming to be a coherent statement, conceived within a c o m m o n set of scholarly guidelines and academic values. A s an academic history, ours is concerned w i t h histori cal fact and accuracy, with sources and influences, and with the relation ship of literature to history in general. O u r w o r k , in other w o r d s , takes full account of the past, not only in the object of our study, but in the previous studies of that object. W e build on w h a t has been done before, and if and w h e n w e do not, w e give our reasons. W e aim not just to tell a story, but also to tell h o w that story has been told before. Aside from those givens, issuing no doubt from large ideological investments, ours is a w o r k that is not dominated by n a r r o w philosophical or methodological con straints. In contrast to most others, the History is not limited by the ideological or aesthetic values of a single author. In the invitations to participate in the project, the editors asked each contributor to be innovative in his or her approach to the field. Each w a s consulted about the limits of his or her area of study and about the very assumptions that make it a coherent subset within Latin A m e r i c a n literary history. Everyone w a s asked, in short, to be self-conscious in his or her choices, not merely to review a field and to furnish an etat present. In this sense the History is not only a history of Latin A m e r i c a n literature, but equally a statement on the current status of Latin A m e r i c a n literary historiography. W h i l e the latitude given to each contributor has resulted in some unevenness, the editors believe that eclecticism enhances the value of the History, both as a reference tool and as an intellectual venture. Some literary w o r k s that previously had not been given much attention (in some cases none at all) have been examined by our contributors, thus effectively incorporating them into the canon. For instance, this is the first history of Latin A m e r i c a n literature to provide detailed coverage of the colonial period, the w o r k s of w o m e n writers, and the literature written in Spanish by C h i c a n o and other Hispanic authors in various regions of N o r t h A m e r i c a . Similarly, this is the first history of Latin A m e r i c a n literature to link meaningfully the w o r k s of Afro-Hispanic and A f r o - A m e r i c a n auth ors. T h e History also brings together Brazilian and Spanish A m e r i c a n literatures, .giving the former the full individual attention it naturally Xll


General

preface

deserves, but also underscoring their contiguities, continuities, and discontinuities. In short, the editors feel that our History is a reassessment and expansion of the canon of Latin A m e r i c a n literature, seen in a broad, N e w W o r l d context. W e are fully a w a r e , of course, that large ideological presuppositions underlie our enterprise. T h e first concerns the very existence of Latin A m e r i c a n literature as such. Since its deliberate creation as a concept and field of endeavor in the 1830s, Latin A m e r i c a n literature has debated whether it is a literature at all or in fact a series of national literatures that share a c o m m o n language. T h e most prominent writers, from Andres Bello to Paz, have argued in favor of the existence of a Latin A m e r i c a n literature that transcends national boundaries; and if one thinks of tradition as being made up by the major w o r k s , as w e do here, then one can assume the existence of a Latin A m e r i c a n literature. H o w e v e r , not everyone has a l w a y s been convinced, and w e d o not question that there are peculiarities that distinguish some national literatures within Latin A m e r i c a . T h e case of Brazil is a special one, of course: there is no doubt that Brazilian literature is a national literature as original and selfcontained as French, Italian, or Spanish literature; its ties to a broader Latin A m e r i c a n literature, h o w e v e r , are strong, if fluid and ever-changing over time. But C u b a n , M e x i c a n , Argentinian, Chilean, and C o l o m b i a n literatures are also marked by national characteristics that are undeni able. T h e s e national inflections are for the most part thematic. For instance, the lives of Blacks and their African retentions play a very significant role in C a r i b b e a n literature, whereas in the Southern C o n e it is the gaucho and his mores that provide a strong thematic strain. T h e r e is, h o w e v e r , a certain h o m o l o g y in the w a y these figures appear in their respective national or regional literatures, one that extends to h o w the Indian is portrayed in areas such as Peru and M e x i c o . N a t i o n a l traditions stress the differences and remain local. But the stronger authors and w o r k s cross frontiers or dwell in the h o m o l o g y . T h e y constitute a kind of overarching literature to w h i c h all aspire. O u r assumption here has been that the most significant and influential part of Latin A m e r i c a n literature is the one engaged in a transnational intertextual exchange. T h e recuper ation of the colonial period, w h e n Spanish A m e r i c a w a s one, is part of this struggle to constitute a continental literature w i t h a c o m m o n origin and discourse. T h i s is one of the strongest forces behind the recent increase in scholarship on the colonial period. T h e breadth of this undertaking is particularly evident in the chapters on colonial literature, both Brazilian and Spanish A m e r i c a n . Until a few years a g o , colonial literature w a s chiefly the object of antiquarian interest, but in recent years this has changed drastically in fundamental and irreversible w a y s . T h e editors and contributors have sought to reflect that xiii Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERAL

PREFACE

change. Before the 1960s, few universities (in Latin A m e r i c a or elsewhere) offered courses on Latin A m e r i c a n writers of the colonial period, but n o w many include in their programs of study Sor Juana Ines de la C r u z , Bernal D i a z del Castillo, G a r c i l a s o de la V e g a , el Inca, and many others. A t the post-graduate level there are n o w monographic courses dealing w i t h those figures, as well as w i t h C o l u m b u s , G o n z a l o Fernandez de O v i e d o , and m a n y other historians of the discovery and conquest of A m e r i c a . Scholarship on these authors has increased significantly in scope and sophistication. T h e r e are n o w international symposia devoted solely to colonial literature, as well as sessions within established, periodical meetings, such as the yearly conventions of the M o d e r n Languages Association of A m e r i c a . Appropriately, given the nature of the chronicles, this History incor porates scholarly materials and methodological tools that are not c o m m o n to literary scholarship. T h e interdisciplinary bent of this part of our venture is enhanced by the contributions of A s u n c i o n Lavrin (in V o l u m e 1) and T h o m a s Skidmore (in V o l u m e 3), w e l l - k n o w n historians of Spanish and Portuguese A m e r i c a respectively. T h i s productive linkage of disciplines is the natural byproduct of recent scholarship. In the past t w o decades, the study of colonial Spanish A m e r i c a n literature has been enriched by its broad interdisciplinary scope. T h e reassessment of early historiography of the A m e r i c a s combines quite freely the findings of rhetorical analyses, historical scholarship, anthropology and archaeo logy. T h i s unprecedented and expanding convergence of disciplines has made possible forms of scholarly cooperation that are exceptional in Hispanic studies, and that certainly point to the research agendas of the future. T h e incorporation of the colonial period into the study of Latin A m e r i c a n literature has improved the overall quality of the criticism devoted to this literature by s h o w i n g the inadequacy of journalistic approaches that are based exclusively on the most recent literary produc tion. T h i s development is intimately tied to the academic legitimation of Latin A m e r i c a n literature as an academic discipline, a fairly recent phenomenon. Curiously, this m o v e m e n t also brings out the strong ties Latin A m e r i c a n literature still has w i t h Spanish and Portuguese literature, both in the colonial period and in the present. If the Iberian M i d d l e A g e s , Renaissance, and Baroque are such a powerful presence in Latin A m e r i can literature, then this literature shares a living past w i t h its metropolitan counterparts. F r o m a scholarly perspective w h a t this means is that scholars of colonial literature (and one hopes, also of modern literature) must n o w have a strong b a c k g r o u n d in medieval, renaissance, and G o l d e n A g e literatures. A full sixth of the History is devoted to the colonial xiv


General

preface

period, and the chapters devoted to the modern periods reflect the weight of that living past. O n e reason for this increase in colonial studies is that modern Latin A m e r i c a n authors have discovered in the w o r k s of the colonial B a r o q u e , or in the chronicles of the discovery and C o n q u e s t , the starting point of the literary tradition to w h i c h they belong. O c t a v i o Paz's v o l u m i n o u s study of Sor Juana is but the latest evidence of this p h e n o m e n o n . Carpentier, G a r c i a M a r q u e z , N e r u d a , and many other contemporary writers have either written about colonial figures or declared their debt to them in interviews and other pronouncements. H a r o l d o de C a m p o s has developed theories of Brazilian literature based on the continued presence of the colonial B a r o q u e , or the self-conscious return to it. M a n y contem porary w o r k s , both in Spanish and Portuguese, include topics, characters, and stories d r a w n from colonial texts. T h i s return to the colonial past, highlighting its pertinence in the present, rounds out the Latin A m e r i c a n literary tradition and e n d o w s it for the first time w i t h a density of five centuries. It does not matter that, if examined closely, this is nothing more than an enabling pretext, or a fable about origins. Literature creates its o w n historical fictions, its o w n history being one of them. O u r History, while being as concrete and factual as possible, reflects the fullness and influence of that fiction. In this sense, t o o , ours is a history of the history of Latin A m e r i c a n literature. T h e editors feel that the History is the first to recognize the richness and diversity of Latin A m e r i c a n literature in the nineteenth century (preceding Modernismo). T h i s field, w h i c h has yet to acquire the institutional recognition accorded to the colonial period, has of late begun to d r a w attention from scholars as well as writers. T h e chapters devoted to both Spanish A m e r i c a n and Brazilian literature of the nineteenth century are a m o n g the most innovative, and constitute the area where the freshest research is offered by our contributors. M o r e than a history bringing to closure the study of this promising field, w o r k on the nineteenth century in the History may very well constitute the founding of a n e w area of specialization. T h e richness and depth of Latin A m e r i c a n literature in the C o l o n i a l period and during the past century is one of the features, perhaps the strongest, that distinguishes it from other literatures of the so-called T h i r d W o r l d . In the 1960s, in the w a k e of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n and other political movements aimed at breaking the grip of colonialism, many Latin A m e r i c a n authors allied themselves w i t h authors w h o s e plight seemed similar to theirs. Regardless of the o u t c o m e of those political alliances the fact is that if by T h i r d W o r l d one refers to countries that emerged from the debacle of nineteenth-century colonialism, then Latin xv


GENERAL

PREFACE

A m e r i c a , being the product of a m u c h older and different colonialism, had to have a very different literary tradition. T h e literatures of the T h i r d W o r l d emerged, for the most part, in our o w n century, whereas those of Latin A m e r i c a reach back really to, at least, the sixteenth. T h e burden of Latin A m e r i c a n culture is a Western culture that extends back to the M i d d l e A g e s , w h e n the foundations of the Spanish Empire in the N e w W o r l d were set. Latin A m e r i c a n culture, particularly Spanish A m e r i c a n , w a s , from the beginning, one of ostentatious viceregal capitals, surpassing in splendor cities of the O l d W o r l d , often because they had to compete w i t h magnificent urban centers constructed by the Aztecs, M a y a s , or Incas. T h i s urban quality of Latin A m e r i c a n culture also obeyed Spanish Neo-Scholasticism, grounded on the Aristotelian notion that civilization w a s , as the e t y m o l o g y indicates, something proper to cities. Latin A m e r i c a n colonial culture, in many w a y s M e d i e v a l , is so distant from that of N o r t h A m e r i c a , or countries of the T h i r d W o r l d , that gross distortions and misreadings are bound to occur in c o m p a r i n g them. Desire for solidarity w i t h the T h i r d W o r l d is a significant element of recent Latin A m e r i c a n literature perhaps even as a movement, but it does not m a k e of Latin A m e r i c a n literature a T h i r d - W o r l d literature. Latin A m e r i c a n literature is not a n e w literature, even if one of its enabling pretexts or founding fables is its newness. O u r History, w e hope, makes this very clear, w i t h abundant supporting evidence. T h e question of the n e w is so poignant in Latin A m e r i c a n literature precisely because it is such an old culture, both back through its European roots, and through those of the native and African cultures. T h e entire history of M a c o n d o , the fictional t o w n in G a r c i a M a r q u e z ' s One Hundred Years of Solitude w h i c h is a microcosmic representation of Latin A m e r i c a , has been written in advance, in Sanscrit, by a w i z a r d ; it is a story that emerges from the very origins of history and writing. In those origins writing precedes history. T h e literatures of the T h i r d W o r l d are recent; some came into being in the twentieth century. Latin A m e r i c a n writers find predecessors, within w h a t they consider as their o w n literature, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A g a i n , Paz's passionate and polemic literary biography of Sor Juana Ines de la C r u z is a case in point. T h e r e were Renaissance-style literary academies in L i m a at the turn of the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, and hundreds of Petrarchan poets in seventeenth-century M e x i c o . If anyone should doubt this he or she ought to read Alicia de C o l o m b i - M o n g u i o ' s superb Fetrarquismo peruano, and Irving A . Leonard's classic Books of the Brave and Baroque Times in Old Mexico. T h e editors and contributors have spared no effort in m a k i n g the History a reliable, informative, and useful reference w o r k and research tool. H e n c e , w e have been careful to be thorough in providing dates and xvi


General

preface

bibliographic information in general. In fact, w e feel that the selective, annotated bibliographies relating to each chapter (printed in V o l u m e 3) constitute in and of themselves a significant contribution to the field. T h e general bibliography at the end w a s compiled by a professional bibliogra pher. In some instances (Carlos A l o n s o ' s comprehensive list of regionalist novels is a g o o d example) the bibliographies are the result of ground breaking research. A l l secondary bibliographies are selective and the annotations are meant to guide future scholars to the latest, the newest, and the most promising w o r k . R e a d in conjunction w i t h their respective chapters, these bibliographies should bring a critic to the point where he or she can begin to m a k e the next original contribution. T h e editors sincerely hope that this will very often be the case and that the History will help to provide an auspicious opening to one hundred years of Latin A m e r i c a n literary historiography. T h e Cambridge History of Latin American Literature d r a w s upon a long tradition of collaborative scholarship that began w i t h the Cambridge Modern History (1902-1912) and includes the eight-volume Cambridge History of Latin America. In its format, general guidelines and scholarly values, the Cambridge History of Latin American Literature aspires to the rigor and accessibility for w h i c h these predecessors are k n o w n . RGE

xvii Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

and

EPW


Acknowledgments

A collaborative w o r k such as this is by its very nature the product of many people, some w h o s e names appear as contributors or editors, and others w h o s e contributions are not so o b v i o u s . W e w o u l d like to thank here as many of those as possible, painfully a w a r e that w e are bound to make errors of omission. W e apologize for them in advance. First of all, w e must thank those contributors w h o have also helped us in many w a y s other than by writing their chapters. First and foremost w e thank Professor D a v i d Haberly, w h o w a s our consultant for the v o l u m e on Brazilian literature. Professor Haberly discussed possible contributors w i t h us, read the chapters for v o l u m e 3 and offered many valuable suggestions about h o w to shape the material. H e also completed the chapter written by José Guilherme M e r q u i o r , w h o s e premature death occurred in February, 1991. In editing that v o l u m e , w e were also aided by Professor K . D a v i d Jackson, w h o s e expertise in all matters Brazilian, and abilities as a translator were both crucial. O t h e r contributors also assisted us in similar w a y s in editing volumes 1 and 2. Professor C a t h y L. Jrade read several manuscripts, offered detailed suggestions about various matters, helped us w i t h the prologues, and participated with the t w o editors in meetings at w h i c h critical decisions were made. W e a c k n o w l edge our great debt to Professor Jrade, w h o also served as a sounding board for ideas, several of w h i c h she helped sharpen or discard. Professor Sylvia M o l l o y gave us important advice concerning the selection of contributors, and also on h o w best to incorporate the w o r k of w o m e n writers into the History. Professors A n í b a l G o n z á l e z Pérez, G u s t a v o Pérez Firmat and Kathleen Ross also aided us w i t h their counsel, friendship, and erudition. W e are especially grateful to A n d r e w Bush and José Q u i r o g a . W e asked them for important contributions w h i c h they had to write in a very limited period of time. T h e library staffs at both Y a l e and Vanderbilt helped w i t h bibliographi cal matters, and the staffs at the respective offices of grants and contracts were our link to the foundations that made the History possible. W e xix


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

should like to single out here Steven H . Smartt, at Vanderbilt, and Alice Oliver at Y a l e . W e have, of course, an enormous debt of gratitude w i t h the N a t i o n a l E n d o w m e n t for the Humanities, w h i c h provided a three-year grant that a l l o w e d us to continue w o r k during the summers, and to the Rockefeller Foundation for a grant to round out the sum provided by the E n d o w m e n t . A t the E n d o w m e n t w e were graciously assisted by D a v i d W i s e , w h o w a s a l w a y s patient with our queries and requests. C o m p l e t i o n of a project as c o m p l e x and time-consuming as this w o u l d have been impossible w i t h o u t the financial backing of these institutions, and w e wish to m a k e public our heartfelt appreciation. D u r i n g the five-year period that w e have spent on this project, the office for the Cambridge History of Latin American Literature has been the Center for Latin A m e r i c a n and Iberian Studies at Vanderbilt. W e have profited from all the facilities available at the Center, and w a n t to thank Vanderbilt for its generosity in putting them at our disposal. T h e most invaluable resource at the Center, and the person to w h o m w e o w e the greatest debt of gratitude, is M r s . N o r m a Antillón, technical secretary to the Director. G i v e n the demands of our many other academic responsibili ties, w h i c h often t o o k us far from the History, M r s . Antillón w a s the only continued presence; at times she seemed to be the History, as the many contributors w h o dealt with her in our absence k n o w well. It w o u l d be impossible even to attempt to enumerate her many contributions, and w e w o u l d rather simply express to her our profound gratitude for her loyalty, devotion, attentiveness, and unswerving commitment to the successful completion of this w o r k . W e also wish to convey our appreciation to M r s . Sandra G u a r d o , secretary to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Y a l e University. She w a s a valuable resource on many occasions. In addition, M r s . Suzan M c l n t i r e , secretary to the Center for International Programs at Vanderbilt, w a s helpful to us in administrative aspects of this project. W e w o u l d also like to recognize M r . Kevin T a y l o r at C a m b r i d g e University Press (England) for his exemplary attention to all matters pertaining to this History. W e are also grateful to M r s . Jay Williams, w h o provided valuable advice about contractual matters and helped improve the style of several chapters. W e also wish to thank the translators, w h o labored hard to transform Spanish and Portuguese prose into academic English. T h e s e are Susan G r i s w o l d , G e o r g i n a D o p i c o Black, D a v i d Jackson, and C i n d y Najmulski. Finally, w e gratefully thank our wives Betty and Isabel for their patience and encouragement, and for m a k i n g our meetings not only possible, but enjoyable. ROBERTO GONZÁLEZ ENRIQUE

ECHEVARRÍA

PUPO-WALKER

XX


Introduction to Volume 2 Roberto Gonzalez Echevarría

Spanish A m e r i c a n literature's best-known w o r k s have appeared in the modern period; that is, from the late 1800s to the present. T h i s v o l u m e of The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, therefore, covers the b e s t - k n o w n and most studied genres, authors, and w o r k s , from R u b e n D a r i o ' s Azul (1888), to Gabriel G a r c i a M a r q u e z ' s Cien anos de soledad (1967) [One Hundred Years of Solitude] including the likes of M a r i a n o A z u e l a ' s Los de abajo (1915) [The Underdogs], R o m u l o G a l l e g o s ' s Dona Barbara (1929) [Dona Barbara], Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones, Alejo Carpentier's El reino de este mundo (1949) [The Kingdom of this World], Cesar Vallejo's Trilce (1922), Pablo N e r u d a ' s Canto general (1950), and O c t a v i o Paz's Fiedra de sol (1957) [Sunstone], to name only a few of the high peaks. A s considerable attention has already been given to these w o r k s , the scholar will find in these chapters of the History the most extensive revisionism. A t the same time, the general reader will find an introduction to the most dynamic and current areas of Latin A m e r i c a n literature. Whereas in the coverage of earlier periods mostly fresh research into the primary w o r k s w a s adduced, here the study of each w o r k , author or period is accompanied by the consideration of a substantial b o d y of criticism, not to mention an already established historical scheme. It is also in this v o l u m e that w e reach that most elusive, yet most influential of periods: the present one, w h i c h is also, of course, our o w n . (Elusive because it is impossible to delimit it, influential because it is the m o m e n t from w h i c h w e write.) C o v e r a g e of the most recent literature leaves the realm of history to enter that of journalism, w h i c h is where our o w n present-determined biases most readily s h o w . T h o s e m a k i n g a contribu tion regarding current trends are clearly taking the greatest risks: w h a t they add to the history of Latin A m e r i c a n literature may or may not remain a part of it. W h i l e Spanish A m e r i c a n literature has generally f o l l o w e d the historical patterns of modern Western literature in this century, it is characterized by i


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significant and recurrent formal and thematic differences. If seen against an idealized scheme of Western literary development, Spanish A m e r i c a n literary movements may at times seem anachronistic (the regionalist novel is one instance), or just late. T h i s , h o w e v e r , w o u l d be a misperception caused by a faulty presupposition: the assumption that a given pace of historical development could and should be attained everywhere. In fact, Spanish A m e r i c a ' s social and political upheavals, its geographic position, and more importantly its position in the w o r l d market, give its artistic movements a rhythm of their o w n , even if within the larger, symphonic score of Western literature. M o m e n t o u s events like the M e x i c a n and C u b a n Revolutions have dramatically brought to the fore some of the peculiarities of Spanish A m e r i c a : in the case of M e x i c o , the presence of large masses of Indians not assimilated into the economic and political mainstream of society; in that of C u b a the clash between powerful, modern, industrialized N o r t h A m e r i c a , and the rest of the A m e r i c a s . T h e first of these issues harks back to the C o n q u e s t , w h o s e lingering impact is still felt in many regions; the second reflects a more recent if no less pressing dilemma. A s one surveys current events in Latin A m e r i c a , especially in Peru and M e x i c o , the persistence of these socio- and geo political problems is evident. In literature, no matter h o w many different guises it takes, the issue a l w a y s appears as the question of modernity. M o d e r n i t y emerges as a self-conscious topic with the appropriately named Modernistas [Modernists], reaching its crescendo during the A v a n t - G a r d e . H o w could Spanish A m e r i c a , as Professors A n i b a l G o n z a lez and C a t h y L. Jrade inquire here in their respective chapters on Modernismo [Modernism], burdened w i t h such an onerous and living past, be modern? Y e t again, h o w could it not be, if it is part of the w o r l d e c o n o m y of g o o d s , values, and ideas? O n the political side this dilemma has often led to deep socio-political upheavals, and generated figures that contain in uneasy coexistence, the modern and the premodern; for e x a m p l e , caudillos of various ilks, from M a n u e l Estrada Cabrera to Fidel C a s t r o , touting modern ideologies such as bourgeois liberalism or M a r x i s m , but in fact, deeply rooted in M e d i e v a l Hispanic patriarchalism. Geographically the conflict has often manifested itself as a clash between the European-oriented cities, mostly coastal, and the " b a c k w a r d " pro vinces, found in the interior. T h e former stay anxiously up-to-date w i t h the latest European artistic movements and feel that they are a part of them, as is made evident in Professor H u g o Verani's chapter on the Vanguardia [Vanguard]. T h e latter cling to colonial w a y s , in w h i c h old Spanish or creole values prevail. O n e could perhaps say that in the broadest possible terms, modern Latin A m e r i c a n literature exhibits the same restless coexistence of the very modern with the s o m e w h a t archaic and anachronistic. T h e most egregious example is G a r c i a M a r q u e z ' s 2 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Introduction novel, Cien años de soledad, clearly modern in style, yet curiously oldfashioned in theme and strong narrative structure. In the early modern period the most enduring creations w e r e poetic (Darío, Vallejo), both during the modernista period and the A v a n t - G a r d e , though a modern novelistic tradition arose early in the century, during the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , studied here by Professor John Rutherford. T h e regionalist novel (Güiraldes, Rivera, Gallegos) displays most visibly the dialectics between the old and the n e w , and between the rural and the urban at the core of Latin A m e r i c a n culture in general. Professor C a r l o s A l o n s o ' s chapter on the regionalist novel s h o w s this, and details the continent-wide appeal of this kind of novel. By mid-century, in spite of the presence of major poets like Paz and N e r u d a , prose-fiction led the w a y , w i t h the emergence of figures such as Jorge Luis Borges, M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias, and Alejo Carpentier, as studied by Professor R a n d o l p h D . Pope. T h e mid to late 1960s saw the efflorescence of the novel k n o w n as the Boom of the Latin A m e r i c a n N o v e l , w h i c h boasted highly experimental w o r k s by Julio C o r t á z a r , C a r l o s Fuentes, M a r i o V a r g a s L l o s a , and García M á r q u e z . In a w a y , this " n e w n o v e l " w a s really a late b l o o m i n g of the avant-garde novel, cross-bred w i t h the Latin A m e r i c a n regionalist tradition. T h a t is to say, C o r t á z a r , Fuentes, V a r g a s L l o s a , and G a r c í a M á r q u e z are belated heirs of Proust, Joyce, K a f k a , and Faulkner. O n e of the more striking trends in modern Spanish A m e r i c a n literature is a dual urge to break w i t h Europe and to adopt the w a y s of the nonEuropean peoples in the N e w W o r l d , specifically Indians and Africans. W h i l e it is true that in the broadest sense the artistic movements generated by this desire to deny the W e s t are very m u c h a part of a trend peculiar to the W e s t itself, the fact is that in Latin A m e r i c a , because of the presence of radically different cultures that are nominally a part of the national cultures and polities, they are e n d o w e d with a peculiar authenticity and have enjoyed a longer life than elsewhere. Indigenismo [Indigenism] and Afro-Antilleanism, analyzed in detail here by Professors Rene Prieto and V e r a M . Kutzinski respectively, are a m o n g the most important artistic movements in modern Spanish A m e r i c a . T h e latter w a s the context in w h i c h various major poets, like the C u b a n N i c o l á s Guillen and the Puerto R i c a n Luis Pales M a t o s , began their w o r k . Both movements, particularly Indigenismo, had a powerful connection to politics. T h e y have left a legacy in Spanish A m e r i c a that still survives, chiefly in the novel (Carpentier's Concierto barroco [1974], and V a r g a s L l o s a ' s El hablador [1988] [The Storyteller], are g o o d examples). A corollary of this rejection of European civilization, but again issuing from it, is the persistent theme of revolution present in modern Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. T h i s topic harks back to the theme of utopia, prevalent since the colonial period, but gathers m o m e n t u m and artistic 3 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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expression during the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , w h e n it gives rise to the subgenre of the N o v e l of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n (related to a powerful pictorial flourishing in the w o r k of the Muralists). In the poetic sphere revolution takes on a more cosmic air in w o r k s by major poets such as N e r u d a and Paz. Here, sometimes taking advantage of indigenous cosmologies, revolution is seen as not merely social or political, but as part of a grander design. Canto general and Piedra de sol are the high peaks of this tendency, w h i c h has attained lesser, though considerable, heights in poets such as Ernesto C a r d e n a l . Professor José Q u i r o g a provides a careful study of these poets, as well as of their poetic and historical context. T h e clash between the modern European legacy and the b a c k w a r d but persistent Spanish A m e r i c a n past has been the spark for a vigorous and sustained essayistic tradition concerned w i t h finding the true identity of Spanish A m e r i c a , as well as that w h i c h distinguishes Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, including literature. T h e tradition opens w i t h José Enrique R o d ó ' s influential Ariel (1900), and continues in the w o r k of the Peruvian José C a r l o s M a r i á t e g u i , the D o m i n i c a n Pedro Henríquez Ureña, the M e x i c a n s A l f o n s o Reyes, José de V a s c o n c e l o s , and Samuel R a m o s , as well as in the Argentinian Eduardo M a l l e a , and the C u b a n Fernando O r t i z . A neat l o o p is closed w i t h R o b e r t o Fernández R e t a m a r ' s Caliban (1967), w h i c h attempts to revise these interpretative efforts from the perspective of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n . Poets like Paz, in his El laberinto de la soledad (1950) [The Labyrinth of Solitude] and José L e z a m a L i m a in his La expresión americana (1958) have made decisive contributions to this essayistic tradition, as have novelists like Alejo Carpentier w i t h his Tientos y diferencias (1962). T h e tradition is one of the most characteristic and significant features of modern Spanish A m e r i c a n literature, and it is the point at w h i c h it links w i t h w h a t could be called Spanish A m e r i c a n thought or philosophy. Here, the w o r k of such figures as L e o p o l d o Z e a plays a mediating role of considerable importance. Professor José M i g u e l O v i e d o provides ample coverage of this essayistic tradition in one of the most extensive chapters in this History. T h e w o r k of w o m e n writers has been a focus of attention in the past few years. Earlier writers like Teresa de la Parra and R o s a r i o Castellanos have been the object of numerous studies, and current ones like Elena P o n i a t o w s k a , Luisa Valenzuela, and Isabel Allende have received considerable critical acclaim. A n effort to rewrite the history of Latin A m e r i c a n literature to include w o m e n writers unjustly neglected previously has met w i t h some success. T h i s History has made a deliberate effort in that direction. A n o t h e r current trend has been the incorporation of popular culture, 4


Introduction perhaps more accurately the culture of the mass-media, into literature both as theme and as a form. T h i s trend, most apparent in the most recent fiction studied by Professor G u s t a v o Pellón, has a troubling political dimension because much of the popular culture prevalent in Latin A m e r i c a is imported from abroad, mostly from the United States. H o w e v e r , the local radio novelas, and more recently the telenovelas, have begun to play an important role in more " s e r i o u s " literature, particularly in M a r i o V a r g a s L l o s a ' s novel La tía Julia y el escribidor [Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter}. In the C a r i b b e a n , A f r o - C u b a n popular music is absorbed into the w o r k s of writers like Severo Sarduy (De donde son los cantantes [From Cuba with a Song]) and Luis Rafael Sánchez (La guaracha del Macho Camacho [Macho Camacho's Beat}). T h e most significant aspect of this trend is that popular culture is not presented in a condescending manner, but seen as an alternative to conventional literary tradition. A s the History goes to press G a r c í a M á r q u e z , D o n o s o , Fuentes, and V a r g a s Llosa continue to produce excellent w o r k s , some better than those that brought them fame during the Boom. A m o n g the poets, Paz towers over the entire continent, north and south, as the premier poet of the moment. T h e deaths of Borges, L e z a m a L i m a , Carpentier, and C o r t á z a r perhaps marked the beginning of the end of w h a t m a y very well have been a golden age of Latin A m e r i c a n literature. A m o n g the newer writers, Severo Sarduy, G u i l l e r m o Cabrera Infante, Luis Rafael Sánchez, G u s t a v o Saenz, and a few others, have produced w o r k s of considerable value and should be n o w reaching their best years. H o w e v e r , Latin A m e r i c a lost three of its most original y o u n g writers with the untimely deaths of M a n u e l Puig, Severo Sarduy, and Reinaldo A r e n a s . It seems that the major change in recent Spanish A m e r i c a n literature is the gradual abandonment of the theme of cultural identity, w h i c h w a s connected to a conception of literature that placed within language the deepest enigmas and potentially the most profound insights into that question. It is difficult to fathom w h a t may be replacing, if indeed anything is, this powerful thematic, w h o s e origins are in R o m a n t i c i s m , within w h o s e central ideas the very notion of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature w a s conceived. Some see in the latest trends an alignment w i t h Post modernism, an as of today still inchoate m o v e m e n t w h o s e main tenet seems to be a rejection of w h a t have been called "masternarratives," by w h i c h is meant the central ideological underpinnings of Western thought and practice. T h e s e are to be replaced by local narratives, w h i c h , rather than language, are seen as the units of the various existing discourses. Is this the reappearance of a form of primitivistic, Utopian thought? O r is it really the result of the emergence of a global culture dominated by the 5


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media and c o m m u n i c a t i o n systems that may replace literature as w e k n o w it? O r , again, is it the recurrence of that desire to abolish literature that has often been the motivation of modern literature since its inception? A n o t h e r issue that clearly troubles current Spanish A m e r i c a n literature is the collapse of M a r x i s m throughout the w o r l d , a development that has pulled out the rug from under much politically committed writing in all genres. T h o u g h no Marxist-inspired literature of any consequence really emerged in modern Spanish A m e r i c a , with the exception of M a r i a t e g u i , M a r x i s m provided a sort of ideological umbrella for much politically oriented writing, particularly in the essay and literary criticism. T h e sudden b r e a k d o w n of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the disintegration of communist C u b a has left many writers (numerous but on the w h o l e quite minor) w i t h o u t an ideological underpinning. A s of this writing it is difficult to figure out if a new political doctrine will occupy the place M a r x i s m once held, or if Marxist-oriented writers will cling to the old formulas in spite of the pressures of a changing reality and ideological climate. T h e contributors to this v o l u m e face all of these issues, and at the same time, in their very w o r k , exemplify the current status of criticism on them, as well as the major trends in Latin A m e r i c a n criticism.

6 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

[ I ]

Modernist poetry Cathy L . Jrade

Attempts to analyze Modernismo [Modernism] have n o w entered their second century. Virtually from its inception, literary observers and critics have struggled to pinpoint its distinctive nature and to detail its primary characteristics. W h i l e innumerable studies have contributed to our understanding of the movement, its image is increasingly refined by recent examinations of the profoundly philosophic and political nature of modernista [Modernist] texts, their relationship w i t h other literatures and modes of discourse, and the w a y they reflect personal responses to the general trends of modern life. T h o u g h R u b é n D a r í o ( 1 8 6 7 - 1 9 1 6 , born Félix R u b é n G a r c í a Sarmiento) defined his - and, therefore, modernist aesthetics as " a c r á t i c a , " that is, opposed to all authority ("Palabras liminares," Prosas profanas y otros poemas), and even though this feature continues to appear on the lists of fundamental characteristics of modern ist verse - (often labeled " v o l u n t a d de estilo" or "striving for an individual style" [see D a v i s o n , The Concept of Modernism in Hispanic Criticism]), M o d e r n i s m manifests an essential unity w h i c h stems from its origin in a shared literary, philosophic, and social context. In the broadest of terms, M o d e r n i s m is the linguistically rich and formally innovative literary movement that began in Spanish A m e r i c a in the late 1870s and that lasted into the second decade of the twentieth century. Its recourse to European artistic visions and poetic models — primarily French Parnassian and symbolist verse - reflected a dissatisfaction w i t h the restrictive Spanish poetics of the day, a longing for cultural a u t o n o m y , and a desire to achieve a sense of equality w i t h the great cultures of Western Europe. W i t h its faith in the poet and poetry, it also proposed a profound response to the crisis of beliefs that surfaced a m o n g the philosophers and artists of Spanish A m e r i c a t o w a r d the end of the nineteenth century, a crisis similar to the one that had dominated intellectual circles throughout the W e s t since R o m a n t i c i s m . It w a s the impact of literary sources, especially the strong influence of 7 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

French poetry, that first attracted attention. In his famous letter to R u b é n D a r í o dated O c t o b e r 22, 1888, and written in response to receiving a personally dedicated copy of Azul. . . the Spanish critic and novelist Juan Valera (1824-1905) defined D a r i o ' s originality and technical perfection in terms of his " g a l i c i s m o m e n t a l " ["mental G a l l i c i s m " ] . T h o u g h V a l e r a ' s judgments are colored by nationalistic pride and ideological conservatism, one can find in his letter to D a r i o those salient features of the m o v e m e n t that have repeatedly received detailed critical attention during the one hundred years since it w a s written. F r o m the outset, major studies sought to pinpoint French models for modernist w o r k s , with the earliest criticism focusing primarily on the formal aspects of this influence. Scholars emphasized changes in meter and verse form, the introduction of new rhythm and rhyme schemes, and symbolic and thematic similarities with earlier French texts. Others chose to distinguish between the perfection of form and devotion to beauty attributed to the influence of Parnassian verse and the musical evocation and dream-like suggestion encouraged by symbolist poetry. T h i s line of inquiry found support in the positions taken by Pedro Salinas ("El problema del modernismo en España, o un conflicto entre dos espíritus") and G u i l l e r m o Díaz-Plaja (Modernismo frente a noventa y ocho), both of w h o m continued to characterize M o d e r n i s m as limited in scope, that is, primarily concerned w i t h aestheticism, the search for beauty, and the renovation of poetic form. Even M a x Henríquez Ureña's comprehensive, insightful, and influential Breve historia del modernismo reflects this general orientation. In it he holds that the central concern of modernist authors w a s to break w i t h "the excesses of R o m a n t i c i s m " and "the n a r r o w criterion of pseudoclassical rhetoric." A c c o r d i n g l y , they opted to transpose French innovations into a Spanish key. Repeated and detailed references to Leconte de Lisle, José M a r í a de Heredia, Alfred de Musset, Victor H u g o , Paul Verlaine, Catulle M e n d è s , Stéphane M a l larmé, M a u r i c e de Guérin, T h é o p h i l e Gautier, Pierre Loti, a m o n g many others, reaffirm this focus. T h e search for " s o u r c e s " and influences w a s not, h o w e v e r , limited to France. A s Valera noted w i t h regard to Azul..., there is a strong and w i d e ranging cosmopolitan spirit that runs through modernist verse. A l l of European and even Middle-Eastern and Oriental art and culture captured the poetic imagination of modernist poets from time to time. O c c a s i o n a l l y the influence w a s direct, more often it came by w a y of Paris, filtered through Parisian imaginations and interpretations. Sensitive to this cultural cross-pollination, D a r í o wrote: A m o más que la Grecia de los griegos la Grecia de la Francia 8


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[I love more than the Greece of the Greeks the Greece of France] in " D i v a g a c i ó n " {Prosas profanas). T h i s cosmopolitanism w a s originally identified with escapism, a rejection of the stifling restrictions of Spanish poetics and culture, and flight from the immediate Spanish A m e r i c a n reality. Later, it w a s seen as a declaration of cultural independence or as an unbridled pursuit of beauty in any shape or form. It is actually a manifestation of a c o m p l e x and profound search, a search that led modernist writers to embrace diverse aspects of high culture from all corners of the globe with a dizzying enthusiasm in the expectation of achieving - in apparent contradiction - a sense of identity that is clearly Spanish A m e r i c a n . A w a r e of their extraordinary place in Spanish A m e r i c a n history, modernist poets broke w i t h Spanish models w h i c h they understood to be both grandiose and inflexible. T h e y turned their eyes instead t o w a r d Europe to find the present and, through the present, the future. T h i s attitude is evident in D a r i o ' s selection in 1888 of the term " M o d e r n i s m " to designate the tendencies of Spanish A m e r i c a n poets (see Henriquez Ureña's "Historia de un n o m b r e " in Breve historia del modernismo). This choice underscores the M o d e r n i s t s ' will to be modern, that is, to become contemporaneous with all of Europe but most especially with Paris. T h e poets sought to leave behind — either through their travels or their imagination - an anachronistic, local reality in order to establish for themselves a modern mode of discourse in w h i c h they could speak for the first time with their o w n voice and with a clear, critical vision of Spanish America. A s a result, "escapist literature" almost immediately became, as noted by O c t a v i o Paz in "Literatura de f u n d a c i ó n " (Puertas al campo), a literature of exploration and return. M o d e r n i s t writers turned their attention from the most up-to-date European trends t o w a r d h o m e and resurrected, through flights of fancy as much as through historical fact, a Spanish A m e r i c a n past that included ancient civilizations, indigenous peoples, and a Spanish A m e r i c a n consciousness. T h i s consciousness is clear in the modernist attitude t o w a r d language and poetry. F r o m the beginning, their concern for formal perfection reflected, along with Parnassian influences, a desire to formalize and to found a modern Spanish A m e r i c a n discourse. T h e i r pursuit of beauty throughout the centuries and across all borders w a s a manifestation of their desire to choose freely the elements of their ideal language. A t the same time, modernist authors struggled with the dominant poetic and prosaic modes of discourse in their attempt to find their o w n voice. T h i s founding effort w a s simultaneously aesthetic and political, with the political becoming 9


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more pronounced w h e n the socio-economic pressures that gave rise to M o d e r n i s m exploded in crisis in 1898 with the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r and later in 1903 w i t h the creation of the state of Panama as a result of United States intervention. T h e change from apparently apolitical poetry, as in the case of M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera (1859-1895) and D a r í o ' s early w o r k s , to a more assertively Spanish A m e r i c a n perspective, as with key poems in R u b é n D a r í o ' s Cantos de vida y esperanza and Alma América: poemas indoespañoles by José Santos C h o c a n o (1875-1934), gave rise to the division of M o d e r n i s m - by critics - into t w o stages. T h e " s e c o n d generation" of Modernists w a s considered more concerned with achieving an artistic expression that w o u l d be genuinely A m e r i c a n . In reality, both "generations" dealt with the issues of Spanish A m e r i c a ' s place in the modern w o r l d and the creation of a language and vision appropriate to that place. T h e recognition of the centrality of these issues to the entire movement not only reaffirms M o d e r n i s m ' s essential unity but also clarifies the key role played by the politically committed C u b a n patriot José M a r t í ( 1 8 5 3 1895) in the formation of M o d e r n i s m . T h e socio-economic conditions that most directly affected the development of M o d e r n i s m of course vary from country to country. T h e r e were, h o w e v e r , certain key factors that consistently came into play. For the most part, the last decades of the nineteenth century saw a consolidation of p o w e r w h i c h brought about a new degree of political stability - despite the periodic resurgence of " c a u d i l l i s m o " and anarchistic tendencies. A t the same time, economic reorganization and g r o w t h brought prosperity and affluence to the upper classes. In urban centers, wealth and international trade encouraged a perceptible Europeanization of life. A s R o b e r t o G o n z á l e z Echevarría has expressed it (in " M o d e r n i d a d , modernismo y nueva narrativa"), in exchange for its raw materials, Spanish America received culture, primarily in the form of manufactured products. T h e turn-of-the-century flood of luxury items filled the homes of the old landed aristocracy, the nouveaux riches, and the aspiring bourgeoisie. It also created an image of life that left a lasting impression upon the poetic imagination of the writers of the time, an image that e v o k e d the sense of well-being, ease, and fashionable excess characteristic of the Parisian Belle Epoque - that is, of the three decades beginning with the 1880s. M e m b e r s of the ruling class allied themselves with foreign financiers and investors, and their primary ambition became the accumulation of capital at the expense of more traditional goals. T h e political philosophy of the day w a s the Positivism of C o m t e and later that of Spencer, both of w h i c h became linked w i t h a type of social D a r w i n i s m . A u g u s t e C o m t e (1798-1857) had developed a philosophical system that rejected metaphy10 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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sics and relied exclusively on the positive sciences. His final aim w a s to reform society so that all men could live in h a r m o n y and comfort. D u r i n g the peace that followed the political consolidation of the 1860s, Positivism became the philosophy of order, p r o m o t i n g progress, science, and the miracles of free enterprise. Society in Spanish A m e r i c a w a s to be organized upon a more rational basis than ever before, and humanity w a s to find itself living in a w o r l d w i t h o u t problems. Scientists were believed to be the bearers of a demonstrable truth and trustees of the future. T h e evils of " m o d e r n life" and industrialization were accepted as necessary for national development. In reality, h o w e v e r , Positivism provided the ruling classes w i t h a n e w v o c a b u l a r y to legitimate injustice as liberal ideology w a s replaced by the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. Inequalities were n o w explained, not by race or inheritance or religion, but by science. T h e M e x i c a n Porfirio D i a z and his "científicos" ["scien tific o n e s " ] , the oligarchy of the Argentinian landowners, and the Chilean nitrate barons best represented the political scene during this era. Positivism generated in most Modernists a strongly ambivalent atti tude. T h e y maintained a respect for science, its breakthroughs, and its contributions to progress; they rejected it, h o w e v e r , as the ultimate measure of all things. Despite the promises made, it became clear that, far from becoming more understandable, life appeared more enigmatic, and the great inventions and discoveries had not provided answers to the fundamental questions of existence. If anything, Spanish A m e r i c a ' s g r o w i n g prosperity and its increasing involvement w i t h the industrial capitals of the w o r l d brought about social dislocations that heightened the sense of crisis a m o n g its writers. T w o essential elements in the social context of modernist art were the disappearance of the old aristocracy along with its patronage of poetic production and the transformation of all products of human enterprise - including art - into merchandise (see Pérus, Literatura y sociedad en América Latina). In this situation, poets had to earn their living producing a marketable c o m m o d i t y . M a n y supported themselves as journalists at the same time that they sought, through their well-crafted poetry, to assert themselves in a w o r l d where the items of highest esteem were luxurious, opulent, and usually imported (see Jitrik, Las contradicciones del modernismo). Some like Julián del Casal (1863-1893) became marginalized, creating a bohemian response to the vulgarity and utilitarianism of bourgeois society. Others, like D a r í o in his famous " E l rey b u r g u é s , " scorned the materialism, mediocre conform ity, and aesthetic insensitivity of the g r o w i n g bourgeoisie. Still others, like M a r t i , put their faith in the superior individual, " e l hombre m a g n o " ["the great m a n " ] , w h o could see beyond the pressures of rapid urbanization and commercialization. W i t h these conditions, modernity, as it is understood in Western 11 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

culture, arrived in Spanish A m e r i c a - or, at the very least, to its great, cosmopolitan urban centers. Recent studies have emphasized that modernity, as a stage in the history of Western civilization, began as early as the second half of the eighteenth century. Its essential characteristics are linked to scientific and technological progress, the industrial revolu tion, and the sweeping economic and social changes brought about by Capitalism (see R o g g i a n o , " M o d e r n i s m o : origen de la palabra y evolu ción de un c o n c e p t o " ) . T h e ideological adjustments necessitated by these far-reaching alterations in the fabric of life have consistently generated a literary response or, as O c t a v i o Paz notes in Los hijos del limo [Children of the Mire], modern poetry has a l w a y s represented a reaction against the modern era and its various manifestations, whether they be the Enlighten ment, critical reason, Liberalism, Positivism, or M a r x i s m . M o d e r n i s m is the literary response to Spanish A m e r i c a ' s entrance into modernity. It is a response to the spiritual and aesthetic v a c u u m created by the positivist critique of religion and metaphysics in favor of science as well as by the positivist support of materialistic, bourgeois values. A s the Modernists formulated their reaction to modernity and sought to deal w i t h their feelings of alienation and anguish, they discovered appealing paradigms in the European literature that they had rushed to read in their attempt to create a modern poetic language consonant w i t h the modern times. T h e y found appropriate models in English and G e r m a n R o m a n t i c i s m , French Parnassianism and S y m b o l i s m , for these literary movements t o o had been reactions to the spiritual upheavals generated by modern life. A s a result, the Modernists found their concerns and their poetry to fall within the mainstream of European literary currents. Broadly stated, M o d e r n i s m is linked to European romantic and postromantic literary production in the w a y that they came to formulate the general crisis of beliefs that has dominated Western culture since the Enlightenment and, perhaps more importantly, in the poetic solutions that they opted to follow. Like the English and G e r m a n R o m a n t i c s and the French Symbolists, the Spanish A m e r i c a n Modernists perceived the anxiety of their age as generated by fragmentation: individuals were out of touch w i t h themselves, w i t h their c o m p a n i o n s , and w i t h N a t u r e . T h e y longed for a sense of wholeness, for innocence, for the paradise from w h i c h they had been exiled by the positivist and bourgeois emphasis on utility, materialism, and progress (see A b r a m s , Natural Super naturalism). Neither traditional religious beliefs, vitiated by liberal thought, nor the dry intellectualization of Positivism provided satisfactory answers. T h e hope for amelioration resided in integration and the reconciliation of conflict. T h e design that the R o m a n t i c s elaborated for possible recovery and that w a s later adapted by the Symbolists and the Modernists centers 12


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on analogy, that vision of the universe as system of correspondences in w h i c h language is the universe's double. By m a k i n g analogy the basis of their poetics, these authors - from the early R o m a n t i c s through the Modernists - made the poet a seer w h o is in touch w i t h the essence of existence. T h e y also turned poetry into a means of discovery, a w a y of seeing the supernatural. Poetry became a type of modern religion, replacing traditional religious beliefs w h i c h were in crisis. For the English R o m a n t i c s such as W i l l i a m W o r d s w o r t h ( 1 7 7 0 1850), Samuel T a y l o r Coleridge (1772-1834), and T h o m a s Carlyle ( 1 7 9 5 1881), poets were the individuals w h o s e vocation w a s to liberate the vision of readers from the bondage of habitual categories and social customs generated in their materialistic environment - so that they could see the n e w , harmonious w o r l d that the poets had c o m e to see. For Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Arthur R i m b a u d (1854-1891) and other French Symbolists, poets were the ones w h o could perceive the h a r m o nious order of the universe behind the chaotic appearance of everyday reality (see R a y m o n d , From Baudelaire to Surrealism). In their poetry, as in Baudelaire's influential sonnet " C o r r e s p o n d a n c e s , " the disordered material of the mundane w o r l d is rearranged into an artistic creation that reflects the " d a r k and profound unity," that is, the orderly soul of both the visionary and the c o s m o s . T h e special language through w h i c h the m a c r o c o s m and microcosm reveal themselves to each other is the language of symbols, metaphors, and analogies. T h e mission of poetry is to rediscover this means of c o m m u n i c a t i o n and to achieve a renewed unity of spirit. T o this end, Baudelaire encouraged the free use of w o r d s and images, w h i c h are to be employed not according to their logical usage but rather in accord w i t h universal analogy, that is, emphasizing the " c o r r e s p o n d e n c e s " between the material w o r l d and spiritual realities as well as a m o n g the different human senses. T h i s interrelationship a m o n g the senses, w h i c h occurs because of affective resonances that cannot be accounted for by logic, provides the conceptual f r a m e w o r k for synaesthesia, the term that is applied in literature to the description of one kind of sensation in terms of another. Synaesthesia, w h i c h is often identified as one of the most distinctive characteristics of both symbolist and modernist verse, also encourages interplay a m o n g the graphic, verbal, and auditory arts, and the appearance of poetic structures based on music or painting. A l l these features taken together w o r k e d to convert the poet's art into an evocative magic. Stéphane M a l l a r m é (1842-1898), in turn, sought to increase the magical p o w e r s of poetry by separating the crude and immediate from the "essential" condition of w o r d s . T h e "essential" w o r d does not function 13



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as an intermediary between t w o minds, but as an instrument of p o w e r capable of a w a k e n i n g the soul to its original innocence. W h e n restored to its full efficacy, language, like music, evokes a pure, untarnished view of the universe. M u s i c , because it is indefinite and innocent of reference to the external w o r l d , became the ideal of poetic creation. Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) had written, in his widely influential " A r t p o é t i q u e , " " D e la musique avant toute c h o s e " ["music before e v e r y t h i n g " ] , advocating a poetry of subtlety and nuance that is as elusive and intangible as the scent of mint and thyme on the morning w i n d . Similarly, D a r í o in " D i l u c i d a c i o n e s , " his introduction to El canto errante, addressed the issue of poetry and music and the need for a constantly revitalized and perfectly adaptable poetic form. H e w r o t e : "I do not like either new or old molds... M y poetry has a l w a y s been born w i t h its b o d y and its soul, and I have not applied any type of orthopedics to it. I have indeed sung old airs; and I have a l w a y s w a n t e d to g o t o w a r d the future under the divine c o m m a n d of music - music of ideas, music of the w o r d . " By viewing M o d e r n i s m as a movement that sought to confront and respond to conditions and concerns similar to those that appeared in Europe following the end of the Enlightenment, it becomes clear that modernist cosmopolitanism and, more specifically, the stylistic changes and experimentation associated w i t h the modernist adaptation of French models are part of a profound philosophic search in w h i c h the sound and substance of poetry are key elements. T h e purposeful use of the musical resources of poetic language, the internal adjustment of ideas, w o r d s , and sounds to the impressions that e v o k e them, and a return to the ancient Hispanic tradition of rhythmic versification became a w a y of seeing b e y o n d and even transcending the imperfect here and n o w . T h e fossilized language of Spanish poetics w a s rejected as incapable of attaining the vision that w o u l d respond to the collapse of the belief systems dominant at the end of the nineteenth century. W h i l e Spanish A m e r i c a n poets had read the Spanish R o m a n t i c s , they failed to find in them convincing models because the spiritual and social dislocations that occurred in Spanish A m e r i c a and that paralleled European experiences had not affected Spain, w h i c h remained, for the most part, philosophically and economically isolated. T h e major exception is G u s t a v o A d o l f o Bécquer (1836-1870), w h o s e emphasis on the sincere expression of profoundly intimate e m o tions and on the musicality of lyric verse had a strong impact on the Modernists. In short, the modernist recourse to analogy sheds light on its c o s m o p o litanism, its obsession w i t h verbal elegance and musicality, and its insistence on artistic freedom, formal experimentation, and heightened individuality. M a n y of these features, as well as others, were further fostered by the artist's rejection of the commodification, commercializa14 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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tion, and superficiality of " b o u r g e o i s modernity," that is, the tradition of modern values w h i c h encouraged faith in progress, pragmatism, and the beneficial effects of science and technology (see Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodern ism). M o r e o v e r , the marketplace affected all aspects of life including art and time, and success w a s judged by the accumulation of wealth. M o d e r n i s t authors responded to the resulting vacuity of everyday exis tence w i t h w h a t had become another tradition, namely, the expression of defiantly hostile antibourgeois attitudes. T h i s expression t o o k many forms including "art for art's s a k e , " eccentricity, dandyism, and Decadentism. T h e idea of "l'art pour l'art" as conceived by the Parnassian T h é o p h i l e Gautier ( 1 8 1 1 - 1 8 7 2 ) appealed to the poetic imaginations of the early Modernists. W i t h this rallying call they summarized the artist's renunci ation of vulgar utilitarianism. Utility w a s associated w i t h ugliness. Similarly, for some, like the English Pre-Raphaelites, their disgust with contemporary changes in the landscape w a s such that they came to believe that beauty existed only in pre-industrial settings. T h e Pre-Raphaelite recourse to allegory and medievalism w a s another rejection of middleclass values that modernist poets considered and that coincided w i t h the general goal of épater le bourgeois. A more radical variation w a s developed by the Decadents as represented by Joris Karl H u y s m a n s (1848—1907), w h o s e A rebours had a tremendous impact on a number of Modernists, most notably José A s u n c i o n Silva (1865-1896), del C a s a l , w h o corresponded with H u y s m a n s in French, and D a r i o , w h o signed his "Mensajes de la t a r d e " with the name of the novel's protagonist, Des Esseintes. Nevertheless, neither Gautier nor the Modernists were blind to the benefits of modern inventions. T h e y quickly modified their stand w i t h regard to elements of modern industrial life: they could be transformed through art into a modern kind of beauty. T h o u g h , perhaps w i t h the exception of Salvador D i a z M i r ó n (185 3-1928), seldom as adventuresome as Baudelaire, w h o sought to extract gold from m u d or to find flowers in the forbidden realm of evil, the Modernists did c o m e to incorporate aspects of urban modernity in their poetry. T h i s n e w form of beauty w a s obviously different from that of classical antiquity. T o comprehend the differences as well as the similarities, the Modernists extended their examination of beauty to include all the ages. T h e resulting syncretism, the extension of cosmopolitanism back in time as well as across borders, is another key feature of modernist verse. In their unrelenting search for the ideal poetic language, one w i t h w h i c h they could address their concerns regarding the life and future of their countries, modernist poets embraced and reconciled varying styles, 15 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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images, religious beliefs, philosophic perspectives, and modes of dis course. T h e i r ability and desire to incorporate a bewildering diversity of images and ideas is linked, in part, to the economic imperialism of the end of the nineteenth century. Surrounded by an o v e r w h e l m i n g proliferation of imported manufactured items, the Modernists created a parallel poetic environment in w h i c h things proliferate not in a referential but in an artificial system (see G o n z á l e z Echevarría, " M o d e r n i d a d " ) . N a t u r e is filtered through any number of aesthetic landscapes from any number of cultures, periods, or artistic media. M o d e r n i s t art is filled w i t h Versaillesque palaces, oriental gardens and interiors, gods and nymphs, gold and pearls, folding screens (biombos), divans, lacquered pieces, urns, and tapestries (see Pacheco, Antología del modernismo). T h e s e places and things are described, especially in early modernist verse, with sophisti cated v o c a b u l a r y and numerous adjectives that both reinforce a sense of wealth and accumulation and, more importantly, reflect the relationship that modernist poets had with the materialism of bourgeois society. T h i s relationship w a s strongly ambivalent. O n the one hand, the values of the dominant classes are exalted in M o d e r n i s m ' s rich language. O n the other, h o w e v e r , the emphasis on wealth is criticized as superficial w h e n seen as an end in itself and not recognized as subservient to the poets' profound search for transcendental beauty and universal harmony. T h i s faith in achieving a harmonious vision of the universe through poetic language distinguishes M o d e r n i s m from later movements w h i c h built upon modernist innovations but w h i c h lost its confidence in poetry as a means of attaining a vision of universal accord. T h e insistent optimism of M o d e r n i s m as well as its pronounced artificiality, ornamen tation, and syncretism have tended to date the movement even though these latter elements reappear - in altered forms, of course, - in the linguistic excesses of the Vanguardia [Avant-Garde] and in the neobaroque stylings of writers like Carpentier and L e z a m a L i m a . T h e movement's essential modernity is evident, nevertheless, in both its rejection of an obsessive concern for referentiality and its creative reaction to the acute sense of anxiety and alienation characteristic of modern times. In their syncretic adaptability the Modernists took artistic models that were both traditional and untraditional. T h e y found inspiration in earlier Spanish masters including Berceo, Cervantes, L o p e de V e g a , G a r c i l a s o , G r a c i á n , Santa Teresa, G ó n g o r a , and Q u e v e d o , and they resurrected the irregular versification of old Spanish poetry. M o r e striking, h o w e v e r , is their repeated recourse to Greek m y t h o l o g y and poetics, especially as interpreted by A n d r e M a r i e de Chénier, M a u r i c e Guérin, Charles M a r i e Rene Leconte de Lisle, or Louis M é n a r d . Similarly, the powerful presence of the pre-revolutionary France of the eighteenth century came by w a y of 16 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Verlaine's Fêtes galantes, the writings of the G o n c o u r t brothers (Edmond de [1822-1896] and Jules de [1830-1870]) and the renewal of interest in the paintings of A n t o i n e W a t t e a u ( 1 6 8 4 - 1 7 2 1 ) . T h e N o r d i c m y t h o l o g y that appears in the poetry of R i c a r d o Jaimes Freyre (1863-1933), D a r i o , and others invokes the even more exotic and unconventional realities of dark, cold, and distant lands as well as the aesthetic theories of Richard W a g n e r (1813-1883), w h i c h complemented many aspects of the symbolist poetics already discussed. T h e G e r m a n composer stressed the interplay of text and music and sought, w i t h his reformulation of G e r m a n i c legend, to revitalize N o r d i c culture w h i c h he, like the Modernists w i t h regard to the situation in Spanish A m e r i c a , found to be undermined by crass commercialization. For both W a g n e r and the Modernists, their artistic formulations were intimately related to the issues of national identity and the formation of national states (see Erika L o r e n z , Ruben Dario "Bajo el divino imperio de la musica ). For others like Julian del C a s a l , the Orient held the greatest fascination. Interest in C h i n a and Japan can be traced all the w a y back to the eighteenth century and the construction in the Palacio Real of M a d r i d of the Salon Gasparini (1764) or in the Palacio de Aranjuez of the Sala C h i n a (1784). M o r e immediate, h o w e v e r , w a s the impact upon turn-of-thecentury sensibilities of imported engravings and objets d art, in particular, their transformation of N a t u r e into stylized lines and colors. T h e literary equivalents, for Spanish A m e r i c a , of these items imported from the Orient once again came by w a y of France in the poetry of Catulle M e n d è s , Pierre Loti, and Stéphane M a l l a r m é , as well as in the French translations of classic Chinese poets in Le livre de jade (1867) by Judith Gautier, daughter of T h é o p h i l e Gautier. T h e aesthetic innovations introduced as a result of the M o d e r n i s t s ' enthusiasm for Oriental art and culture were, as w a s the case w i t h their other poetic innovations, intimately tied to their search for a deeper comprehension of reality, one w h i c h eventually led several poets, most notably A m a d o N e r v o (1870-1919), to explore Buddhism, T a o i s m , and Z e n . T h e artistic explorations of syncretism and exoticism were, during the second half of the nineteenth century, further encouraged by the increasingly significant and pervasive scientific explorations of archaeology and philology. T h e y all uncovered unconventional views of beauty and morality, views that offered images of times or philosophies in w h i c h spiritual peace, order, beauty, and pleasure appeared attainable. T h e s e views increased in importance as the solace offered by o r t h o d o x religious beliefs decreased, that is, as the "death of G o d " w a s experienced on a personal level. " S c i e n c e " led the Modernists and their contemporaries further and further a w a y from traditional beliefs (primarily through the positivistic critique of religion) and t o w a r d heterodox beliefs (through the 33

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archaeological and philological search for origins). T h e s e heterodox beliefs generally entered literary circles mediated by a less rigid, more aesthetically pleasing, humanistic - even religious - approach: that of the occult sciences. T h e occult sciences offered one great advantage. T h e y explored those " o c c u l t " mysteries of life ignored by science w i t h the language of science, giving a certain legitimacy to the spiritual quests of the non-scientist. D a r i o understood the importance of this p h e n o m e n o n well. W h e n in 1895 he w r o t e for La Nation about the revival of occultist creeds in Europe at the time, he described the overall g o a l in the f o l l o w i n g manner: T h e science of the occult, which before belonged to the initiated, to the experts, is being reborn today with new investigations by wise indivi duals and by special societies. The official science of the Western World has still not been able to accept certain extraordinary - but still within the realm of the natural in its broadest sense - manifestations like those demonstrated by Crookes and M a d a m e Blavatsky. But fervent fol lowers hope that, as Humanity moves gradually closer to Perfection, a time will come when the ancient Scientia occulta, Scientia occultati, Scientia occultans, will no longer be arcane. T h e day will come when Science and Religion, as one, will lead man to knowledge of the Science of Life. T h i s passage underscores certain key elements of turn-of-the-century society. T h e general malaise of the period - both in Europe and in Spanish A m e r i c a - w a s identified w i t h a loss, most often that of a paradise from w h i c h modern man has been exiled. T h e ancient w a y of k n o w i n g w a s considered superior to the modern w a y , w h i c h had opted to consider only physical realities and w h i c h tended to disregard the ultimate questions of existence. Despite their limitations, science and technology remained central to the dominant value system, one in w h i c h poets had to function. T h i s awareness, as well as the ambivalence that it bred, infiltrates modernist writings. M o s t Modernists recognized the value and p o w e r of science but also felt that they offered in their poetry an alternative vision that w a s genuinely superior even if it w a s ignored or misunderstood by the vast majority. T h e resulting dual perspective becomes evident w h e n one compares modernist prose and poetry. A t first the differences appear related to the question of audience and the authors' concessions, in the more widely read prose, to prevalent attitudes. W h i l e the public addressed no doubt played a part, a more significant factor is that of modes of discourse. A s A n i b a l G o n z a l e z has s h o w n , (in La cronica modernista bispanoamericana) w h e n the Modernists set out to write prose their model w a s primarily the scientific discourse of philology w i t h second place given to the more commercial m o d e of journalism. T h e primary 18


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discursive model for modernist poetry w a s religion w i t h a progressively greater incorporation of the analogical vision proposed by occultism (see Jrade, Ruben Dario and the Romantic Search for Unity). T h e origin of the distinctive modes of discourse linked to prose and poetry is a romantic tradition that began w i t h W o r d s w o r t h . W o r d s w o r t h held that the most characteristic subject matter of poetry consists of things modified by passions and the imagination of the perceiver. W o r d s w o r t h therefore replaced the contradistinction of poetry and prose w i t h the more philosophical one of poetry and science. Similarly, Coleridge insisted that the essence of poetry, that is, the union of passion, thought, and pleasure, existed in opposition to science and civil and natural history. By the early Victorian period all discourse w a s explicitly or tacitly t h r o w n into the t w o exhaustive modes. Religion fell together w i t h poetry in opposition to science and, as a consequence, religion w a s converted into poetry and poetry into a kind of religion. W h e n poetry stepped in to fill the void left by the collapse of o r t h o d o x belief systems, it found its models in the ancient esoteric tradition that had survived throughout the centuries in hermetic and occultist sects. T h i s tradition is based on analogy and the belief that the universe is alive, harmonious, and responsive. Equally important for the Spanish A m e r i c a n poets at the time w a s the esoteric premise that the ancient w i s d o m of the sages did not disappear w h e n Christianity became the w o r l d ' s most powerful religion but rather simply assumed the symbolism of the n e w faith, perpetuating through its emblems and allegories the same truths that have been the property of the wise since the beginning of time. T h i s faith in the fundamental unity of all religions provided those poets w h o hesitated to abandon their childhood beliefs w i t h a framework in w h i c h they w o u l d reconcile C a t h o l i c d o g m a w i t h the appealing alternative belief systems. A l s o , as noted by D a r i o in the article for La Nation, cited a b o v e , the syncretic perspective of the occult sciences w e n t so far as to include science and scientific research as well as a wide-reaching eclecticism. T h e occultist sects that enjoyed an active revival in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century were numerous. T h e y included the T h e o s o p h i c a l Society founded by M a d a m e Blavatsky and C o l o n e l O l c o t t , the Rosicrucians headed by Sar Peladan, and the Independent G r o u p of Esoteric Studies directed by G e r a r d Encausse, " P a p u s . " T h e y embraced a w i d e range of systems not a l w a y s in perfect ideological harmony. T h e r e were references to C a b a l i s m , astrology, magnetism, hypnotism, Gnosti cism, freemasonry, alchemy, and several oriental religions. T h e literary circles of Europe were saturated w i t h believers and proselytizers. Recent studies have demonstrated the degree to w h i c h romantic and symbolist writings were permeated with cabalistic, hermetic, theosophical, and 19



LITERATURE

Eastern thought. A s a result, w h e n tracing occultist influences on moder nist verse in most cases it is impossible to determine those that were direct and those that came through contemporary European poetry. Aspects of these influences have routinely been identified as Pythagor ean. It is best, h o w e v e r , to remember that the Pythagoreanism that had an impact upon M o d e r n i s m w a s generally reinterpreted through esoteric doctrine and freely combined elements not only from historical Pythagor eanism but also from N e o - P y t h a g o r e a n i s m , Platonism, and N e o p l a t o nism. Perhaps it w a s the emphasis of esoteric Pythagoreanism on order, h a r m o n y , and music that most immediately captured the poetic imagina tion of this generation of writers and led to the incorporation of a number of u n o r t h o d o x tenets into w h a t can be called the modernist w o r l d view. A s w a s the case w i t h the R o m a n t i c s and the Symbolists, h a r m o n y as a philosophical ideal associated w i t h divine perfection forms the basis of the modernist c o s m o l o g y . T h e entire universe is one harmonious and orderly extension of G o d , w h o s e soul permeates all and is identical with the great soul of the w o r l d . Universal h a r m o n y is demonstrated both in the beauty of music and the regularity of the heavenly bodies. T h e image of celestial music results from the fusion of these t w o points and distills the modernist v i e w that the universe is a living, rhythmically pulsating extension of G o d in w h i c h all elements are signs that indicate its essential unity. Since both the individual and the universe are made in the image of G o d , each being is a microcosm that should strive to implant in his or her soul the h a r m o n y seen in the m a c r o c o s m . It is recognized, h o w e v e r , that there are certain superior individuals w h o are more conscious than others of the divine element within them and, consequently, more able to recognize the transcendent order of the w o r l d around them. R o m a n t i c and symbolist literary theory encouraged the identification of these special individuals w i t h poets. Esoteric beliefs linked this superior status to a highly evolved soul, one that had become perfected through numerous incarnations. W h i l e not every M o d e r n i s t held fast to the idea of transmigration of souls, it is a concept that appears throughout modernist verse either playfully as a dimension of modernist syncretism or seriously as an alternative to Christian salvation. A n o t h e r alternative to the strongly restrictive views of Christianity that w a s supplied by occultism deals w i t h an aspect of modernist art that highlighted its departure from earlier movements. T h i s feature is the modernist elevation of sexuality. Whether sexuality became important as a personal and immediate response to the emptiness of life or as a defiant challenge to the conservatism of middle-class morality (a defiance similar to dandyism in other aspects of life), esoteric tradition supplied a w a y of l o o k i n g at sexuality that made it possible for erotic longings to be 20 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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incorporated in, and to become an essential element of, the modernist c o s m o l o g y , an element that reinforced and reaffirmed many others already discussed in detail. A s Paz recognized w i t h regard to the R o m a n t i c s , the exaltation of the natural order of things, especially sexuality, is simultaneously a moral and political critique of civilization and an affirmation of a time before history (Los hijos del limo). Erotic passion is a part of nature that has been inhibited and/or destroyed by the social order. Reclaiming its importance becomes linked w i t h intuiting a primordial, more perfect w o r l d . For European poets of the second half of the nineteenth century and for the Modernists, the occult sciences provided the f r a m e w o r k for this stance. By affirming the sexual nature of the godhead and by appropriating the esoteric myth of primordial man as a cosmic androgyne, sexual love became a means of a p p r o x i m a t i n g the androgynous state of the primal man, and, since his fall into evil is identified w i t h his entrance into the w o r l d of materiality and t w o sexes, a return to the union of male and female became a means of perceiving the prelapsarian bliss of unity as well as of intuiting the divine state. T h e ideal female w i t h w h o m the poet must join to attain the much pursued perfect vision is often linked w i t h poetic language and the product of their union described in sensuous and seductive terms. C r e a t i o n , whether poetic, personal, or cosmic, is con ceived as sexual. A s a result, eroticism and religion are brought together in w h a t is a radically n e w w a y for Hispanic poetry. T h e experimentation w i t h rhythm and rhyme schemes, verse forms, styles, images, myths, religions, and philosophies that underpins the richness of modernist art began as a search that inevitably turns back upon itself, that is, it is linked to the question of Spanish A m e r i c a n modernity and, in broader terms, Spanish A m e r i c a n identity. A s the modernist poets reflected upon the formation of nation states and the integration of Spanish A m e r i c a into the w o r l d e c o n o m y , they confronted the issue of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. M a r t i ' s case is perhaps the most extreme; he aspired to create a n e w nation as well as a n e w literature. F r o m this perspective, the political impetus of modernist literature becomes evident - even in the early modernist verse that had been defined by M o d e r n i s m ' s first commentators as escapist and superficial. T h r o u g h out the development of M o d e r n i s m , European literature offered models and guidance. T h e answers that the Modernists formulated were not blind imitations but creative adaptations to their o w n circumstances and original responses to their unique set of aspirations, tensions, and linguistic possibilities. T h e s e answers eventually opened the w a y for the Avant-Garde. T h e modernist movement began in several parts of the continent during the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a development of R o m a n t i 21 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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cism, w h i c h had already started to create an original literature for the n e w , independent countries of Spanish A m e r i c a . It w a s sustained by the urban affluence and cosmopolitanism of such centers as M e x i c o City, H a v a n a , and B o g o t á in the north and Santiago de C h i l e , Buenos Aires, and M o n t e v i d e o in the south. T h e s e cities supported the most important literary magazines of the Spanish-speaking w o r l d , magazines that were crucial in the diffusion of concepts, trends, and translations and in the formation of a continent-wide movement. T h e y included Revista Azul, Revista Moderna, El Cojo Ilustrado, El Mercurio de América, and Vida Moderna. By the i88os the first Modernists had produced a notable transforma tion in Spanish literature. T h e major writers at the time were M a n u e l G o n z á l e z Prada (Peru, 1 8 4 8 - 1 9 1 8 ) , Salvador D í a z M i r ó n ( M e x i c o , 1 8 5 3 1928), José M a r t í ( C u b a , 1 8 5 3 - 1 8 9 5 ) , José A s u n c i ó n Silva ( C o l o m b i a , 1865-1896), M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera ( M e x i c o , 1 8 5 9 - 1 8 9 5 ) , Julián del C a s a l ( C u b a , 1863-1893), Justo Sierra ( M e x i c o , 1 8 4 8 - 1 9 1 2 ) , and Fran cisco G a v i d i a (El Salvador, 1 8 6 3 - 1 9 5 5 ) . It w a s D a r í o , h o w e v e r , w h o became the intellectual center of gravity of the movement, gave it its name, and propelled it forward with driving energy and genius. By the end of the year in w h i c h he published the first edition of Prosas profanas (1896), a w o r k of revolutionary vision and artistry, he w a s the undisputed head of and spokesman for M o d e r n i s m . By the end of 1896 C a s a l , M a r t í , Gutiérrez Nájera, and A s u n c i ó n Silva were dead and the other early Modernists had all written their best poetry. D a r í o led the younger Modernists in a continued reassessment of poetic language and its relationship to the changing Spanish A m e r i c a n scene. T h e f o l l o w i n g poets are those w h o are generally considered the most important younger Modernists (arranged by birthdate): M a n u e l José O t h ó n ( M e x i c o , 1 8 5 8 1906), Francisco A . de Icaza ( M e x i c o , 1 8 6 3 - 1 9 2 5 ) , Luis G . Urbina ( M e x i c o , 1868-1934), R i c a r d o Jaimes Freyre (Bolivia, 1868—1933), A m a d o N e r v o ( M e x i c o , 1 8 7 0 - 1 9 1 9 ) , G u i l l e r m o Valencia ( C o l o m b i a , 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 4 3 ) , José M a r í a Eguren (Peru, 1 8 7 4 - 1 9 4 2 ) , L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s (Argentina, 1 8 7 4 - 1 9 3 8 ) , Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay, 1 8 7 5 - 1 9 1 0 ) , José Santos C h o c a n o (Peru, 1 8 7 5 - 1 9 3 4 ) , Juan R a m ó n M o l i n a (Honduras, 1875-1908), Franz T a m a y o (Bolivia, 1 8 7 9 - 1 9 5 9 ) , G r e g o r i o R e y n o l d s (Bolivia, 1882-1948), R i c a r d o M i r ó (Panama, 1883-1940), and Delmira Agustini (Uruguay, 1 8 8 6 - 1 9 1 4 ) .

The early

Modernists

W h i l e , more than w i t h any other modernist poet, D a r i o ' s life and w o r k s reflect the major trends and tendencies of the entire modernist movement, the characteristics of his early art had already begun to appear in various 22 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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places in Spanish A m e r i c a by the time he published his first major v o l u m e of w o r k . T h e features that characterize w h a t w o u l d c o m e to be k n o w n as modernist poetry included dissatisfaction and disillusionment w i t h the values of the ruling class, anxiety and a sense of crisis w i t h regard to traditional religious beliefs, and an eagerness to establish a n e w , uniquely Spanish A m e r i c a n perspective. T h e first Modernists aspired to produce a poetry that rivaled the esteemed art and imported items that were entering the great cosmopolitan centers of Spanish A m e r i c a from all corners of the w o r l d but most especially from Europe and Europe's cultural capital, Paris. T h i s poetry sought to liberate verse form from the inflexibility of classical norms and to achieve a powerful vision based on an innovative conception of language, one in w h i c h musicality w a s thought capable of evoking profound realities. T h e s e founding trends underpin the w o r k s of the most accomplished poets of the period. M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera, Julián del C a s a l , José M a r t í , and José A s u n c i ó n Silva are generally considered, along w i t h D a r í o , the best early Modernists. Even before them, h o w e v e r , others had contributed to the early development of the movement. T h o u g h M a n u e l G o n z á l e z Prada is generally k n o w n more for his prose than for his poetry, he published nine important volumes that set Spanish A m e r i c a n verse on the road t o w a r d M o d e r n i s m . Part of his poetry w a s intellectual and didactic, part amorous and sentimental, but a b o v e all else it w a s innovative. After reading Parnassians and Symbolists, he w r o t e imitations, adaptations, and translation; he experimented w i t h their views of language and their formal changes; he adapted, to Spanish, verse forms from French, English, and Italian; and he incorporated synaesthesia into his w o r k . Justo Sierra also is k n o w n less for his poetry than for his w o r k as a historian, educator, orator, and politician, yet in his verse there are clear pre-modernist or early modernist elements. His poetry is graceful, fresh, elegant, and responsive to the n e w tendencies that came from abroad, from the Parnassians, Bécquer, D ' A n n u n z i o , and Nietzsche, to name just a few. Salvador D í a z M i r ó n , on the other hand, stands out for his poetic production. Since 1886 w h e n he published his early verse, his presence w a s felt a m o n g modernist writers such as D a r í o , w h o praised his dynamic, freedom-loving poetry in one of the " M e d a l l o n e s " of the 1890 edition of Azul... W h i l e D í a z M i r ó n ' s tone w a s revolutionary and his focus w a s on the human struggle within the urban, industrialized centers of Spanish A m e r i c a , he w r o t e w i t h a grace, learning, and attention to style that appealed even to those concerned primarily w i t h the aesthetics of modernist innovations. D u r i n g his second period, w h i c h begins w i t h Lascas, his revolutionary concerns were directed t o w a r d the formal aspects of his poetry. H e experimented w i t h musical effects, w i t h ¿3 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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accentual and rhythmic changes, and sought, at the expense of the energy singled out by D a r í o , a delicate, formal perfection. A n o t h e r reformer w a s Francisco G a v i d i a , w h o is perhaps best remembered today as one of D a r i o ' s teachers. H e introduced into M o d e r n i s m the new rhythms of the French A l e x a n d r i n e and the G r e e k hexameter.

M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera Gutiérrez Nájera w a s one of the first Modernists to recognize that the stultification of Spanish verse stemmed not from inherent linguistic limitations but rather from a resistance to change fostered by Spain's cultural isolationism. H e advocated greater artistic freedom parallel to the cultural openness evident in his beloved M e x i c o City and in his famous p o e m " L a D u q u e s a J o b . " A s in this revealing piece, the imported models of elegance and grace by w h i c h M e x i c a n society w a s beginning to judge itself were never proposed as substitutes for uniquely Spanish A m e r i c a n attributes. His enthusiasm for European literature, for beauty, musicality, and art for art's sake - w i t h o u t specific pragmatic goals reflected his faith that art could reveal profound realities, realities he hoped w o u l d fill the spiritual void left by traditional religion and by the ideology of the " m o d e r n " businessman and scientist. A s he repeatedly made clear in his extensive critical writings, he believed that the intuited and evocative w i s d o m of art w o u l d serve the public g o o d as well as national and nationalistic ends. Like the D a r í o of " E r a un aire s u a v e , " the Gutiérrez Nájera that has been identified as "Frenchified" cannot be judged superficially. His playful cosmopolitan spirit, his poetic experi mentation, as in the Parnassian " D e b i a n c o , " and his search for the perfect adaptation of image and language, of color and tone are all products of serious reflection upon both the promises and failings of the expanding cultural and commercial environment of the time. Gutiérrez Nájera k n e w the changing M e x i c a n scene well. A s a pro fessional journalist he kept his readers, many of them w o m e n , informed of the events, trends, and fashions of the day. Under various pseudonyms including his most famous, " E l D u q u e J o b " - he w r o t e reviews, c o m m e n tary, chronicles, as well as short stories. H e actually produced much more prose than poetry, w h i c h w a s collected only posthumously by Justo Sierra in 1896 in a v o l u m e entitled Poesías. Nevertheless, his poetry w a s well k n o w n and quite influential during his lifetime. It w a s admired for the vitality and elegance it brought to Spanish verse, even though his innovations were limited to the introduction of n e w accentual patterns within traditional metrical forms, especially the octosyllable and the hendecasyllable. W h i l e Gutiérrez Nájera's confrontation w i t h the spiri tual abyss left by the materialistic and positivistic perspectives dominant 2-4 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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at the time lends a melancholy and tortured air to much of his poetry, it is its lilting musicality and delicate imagery that leave the greatest impact. His confrontations with the destructive passage of time, the o v e r w h e l m ing presence of death, and the confining limits of h u m a n experience are converted into masterpieces that underscore not only the redemptive p o w e r of art, as in " N o n omnis m o r i a r , " but also his unending search for beauty, beauty that could permeate human actions and influence moral behavior. T h i s desire - rooted in Hegelian philosophy and G e r m a n romantic idealism — to influence, through his art, the course of his nation's history highlights once again the breadth and seriousness of the modernist quest. It also emphasizes the spiritual unity of the movement, for it is perhaps the key element in the w o r k s of José M a r t i , often considered the most imposing figure of the period.

José M a r t i It has been virtually impossible to speak of José M a r t i w i t h o u t alluding to his dedication to the cause of C u b a n independence w h i c h formed the intellectual b a c k d r o p to his political, moral, and philosophic writings and w h i c h ultimately led to his death on the battlefield of D o s R í o s . His prose pieces (particularly his speeches), their powerful and innovative use of the Spanish language, and their insightful reflections upon the developments at the turn of the century have tended to receive more attention than his three volumes of verse. His poetry, as he himself confesses, served as a break from his primary tasks of journalism and politics. Nevertheless, those features that have been singled out for praise in his prose are also essential to his poetry and m a k e it fundamental to the formation of the modernist movement. M o s t important are his sense of moral imperatives and his insistence that language conform to the lyrical impulses that drive it - even at the risk of being shocking or brutally sincere. A s Cintio Vitier has pointed out in his " E n la mina m a r t i a n a , " M a r t i not only sought to make a revolution through his w o r d s but he also hoped to revolutionize language itself, m a k i n g it more A m e r i c a n and receptive to modern times and, perhaps more importantly, to the future. His famous phrase " L a expresión es hembra del a c t o " underscores the bond between w o r d and deed, suggesting, like the female metaphors that run throughout D a r i o ' s w o r k , that language, upon being fertilized, should give birth to verbal children, w h o , in M a r t i ' s case, are the moral equivalent to the acts of just men. It w a s possibly this ethical orientation combined w i t h M a r t i ' s lasting respect for traditional Spanish verse forms - despite his enthusiasm for the French and N o r t h A m e r i c a n literature of the day, most notably the visionary figure of H u g o , the sonorous cadences of W h i t m a n , and the 2-5 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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oneiric fantasies of Poe - that made early critics slight his contributions to modernist verse. T h i s c h r o n o l o g y has n o w been rectified, thanks in great part to M a n u e l Pedro G o n z a l e z and Ivan A . Schulman, w h o led efforts to have M a r t i credited with initiating many of the key characteristics of the movement. A s a result, the beginning of the m o v e m e n t is n o w often dated by the publication of Ismaelillo, M a r t i ' s first collection, in 1882. In reality, M a r t i ' s innovations g o to the essence of modern Spanish A m e r i c a , thereby anticipating not only modernist struggles w i t h language but also those of the A v a n t - G a r d e . A s M a r t i ' s o w n analysis of his poetry in the prose introduction to his Versos litres (completed in 1882 and published posthumously in 1913) w o u l d indicate, his refusal to temper his structures or images at the expense of his visions, his metaphoric brilliance and novelty, and his acceptance of the difficulty of his verse along w i t h its pure, often brutal, sincerity are characteristics that point to hidden links between M o d e r n i s m and the A v a n t - G a r d e . W h i l e a number of studies have examined similarities in the w o r k s of Vallejo and M a r t i , until recently this aspect of modernist poetry has received relatively little attention. Y e t it is this willingness - perhaps eagerness - to tap the p o w e r of dreamed, unfettered, even illogical visions and verbal structures that is picked up later by Julio Herrera y Reissig and L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s and that underpins w h a t Y u r k i e v i c h has called the " c a u s a l connection between M o d e r n i s m and the first Vanguardia." W h i l e Versos libres w a s completed during the same year as Ismaelillo and contains poems from as early as 1878, Ismaelillo is M a r t i ' s first p u b lished b o o k of verse. It consists of fifteen p o e m s dedicated to his absent son, José Francisco (Pepito), w h o had been born in 1878. T h e personal events surrounding their separation and the creation of these poems are of interest in that they emphasize h o w thoroughly M a r t i ' s commitment to the cause of C u b a n independence permeated his life and w o r k . W h i l e he w a s living in N e w Y o r k with his wife, C a r m e n Z a y a s B a z à n , she often accused him of caring more for C u b a than for his family. O n e day, w i t h out notice, she left for C u b a w i t h their son, w h o m M a r t i w o u l d never see again. O u t of the pain of this loss g r e w Ismaelillo, w h i c h , in contrast with the texts of the short-lived journal La Edad de Oro (1889), is a b o o k not for children but rather about one child. It captures the pure, spontaneous joys of parenthood as well as M a r t i ' s hopes for his son and for the future, w h i c h c o m e together in the sense of mission and purpose that he aspires to pass on. It is this tension between the lyrical innocence of the child and the moral w o r l d of the father that structures the w o r k and also makes it appear so fresh, dynamic, and modern. T h e son becomes a knight, a shield, a refuge for the father. T h e w o r k fuses in this w a y imaginary elements with moral and spiritual comfort and purposeful action. In this regard, Santi ("Ismaelillo, M a r t i y el modernismo") suggests that the title z6


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of the collection alludes to the e t y m o l o g y that M a r t i attributed to Ishmael namely, "Ser fuerte contra el destino" [" to be strong against the challenges of fate"], for the child is heroic despite his not having had to suffer the trials of exile like his true father or his fictional namesake w h o , along w i t h his mother, w a s cast out by Sarah, A b r a h a m ' s legitimate wife. Despite the fact that Ismaelillo w a s t o o little read during its time to have been influential, its style represents the best of early M o d e r n i s m . It makes m a x i m u m use of the traditional seguidilla, giving it a light and energetic air. V e r b s are chosen for their sense of movement, nouns for their metaphoric p o w e r , and adjectives for their pictorial qualities. T h e overall impression is one of activity that borders on chaos, a chaos that reinforces the urgency of the emotions that well up uncontrollably within the loving father. T h i s sense of urgency also dominates the contemporaneous Versos libres and the poems of M a r t i ' s next collection, Flores del destierro (written between 1882 and 1891 but published posthumously in 1933). T h e r e is a verbal abundance, a volcanic flow of emotions and images that suggest the directness and spontaneity of drafts rather than the studied revisions of polished pieces. T h e adjectives are strong and often surprising and the verbs usually appear in the present, the infinitive, or the imperative, communicating action and activity. T h o u g h these w o r k s address the same anguish and struggles as Ismaelillo, their focus is more universal and the perspective more existential, once again projecting a kinship w i t h poetry of the twentieth century and asserting an unexpected modernity. A l l the tensions and pressures that he felt as a committed, conscientious individual are verbalized in w h a t he called the " r o u g h , hairy hendecasylla b l e s " of these p o e m s . W i t h a clearly stated faith in the harmonious order of nature, they explore exile, love, loss, justice, responsibility, and poetry. Anticipating images similar to those of D a r i o ' s " E r a un aire s u a v e " and " Y o soy aquel que ayer no más d e c í a , " M a r t í in " P o é t i c a " describes his verse as capable of g o i n g to the salons of the rich and royal, capable of courting ladies and princesses. Y e t it prefers the silence of true love and the dense g r o w t h of the jungle. T h e r e , and not in the urban centers of imported and superficial values, the poet can read the secrets of the universe that he must convey to his readers. His rejection of the city is complete. It represents hypocrisy, fakery, and the masses of p o o r and suffering. In contrast, the countryside represents purity, sincerity, and contact w i t h the universal forces that give meaning to all the mysteries of life - including love and death. Y e t M a r t i k n o w s , as he makes clear in " A m o r de ciudad g r a n d e , " that the present and future belong to the city, to the w o r l d contaminated by time and sin. His poetic response under scores the dilemma of the modern poet - one that haunted N e r u d a and 27 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Vallejo as well - as he sees himself torn between social action and artistic involvement. M a r t i finds a compromise that recalls his roots in R o m a n t i cism, namely, faith in a sincerity and a purity of purpose that reflects the orderly perfection of nature. A l l these elements c o m e together later in Poem 17 of Versos sencillos, as he envisions his poetry as the musical expression of the loving, k n o w i n g rhythm of the c o s m o s that passes through his soul. It is in this last collection - w i t h his recourse to the most c o m m o n of verse forms in the Hispanic tradition, octosyllables, redondillas, and quatrains - that his aspiration t o w a r d clarity, simplicity, and h a r m o n y is most evident. T h e w o r k ' s popular tone and its Pythagorean vision of harmony offer a pristine image of Spanish A m e r i c a and of a direct, natural, intuitive w i s d o m that is easily contrasted w i t h the artifice of Europe and N o r t h A m e r i c a . T h e fusion of art and politics, biography, philosophy, and passion give these simple lyrics a profound and universal transcendence.

Julian del C a s a l It is revealing - about the modernist movement and the men in question that Julian del C a s a l should in many w a y s appear to be, as noted by Cintio Vitier (Lo cubano en la poesia), the antithesis of his compatriot and contemporary José M a r t i . T h e s e differences stem from different w o r l d views, life expectations, and temperaments. M a r t i ' s faith in man to act morally and to recreate in his life and art the harmonious order of the universe permeated all that he did and w r o t e . For C a s a l life w a s a constant disappointment, flawed by personal indignities, human failings, and cosmic injustices. H e resented having to w o r k as a journalist and lost his job repeatedly, but he had few options and w a s forced to return to writing for newspapers about the social, literary, and theatrical scene in order to earn a living. T h r o u g h o u t his career, he offended many as he struggled against w h a t he considered crass materialism, ignorance, and bad taste. For the greater part of his life he suffered physical pain and, t o w a r d the end, he k n e w that he w o u l d die y o u n g . A s a result of all these as well as other philosophic and artistic factors, C a s a l saw art not as the product of natural forces, as it w a s for M a r t i , but rather as something different from and superior to nature. A r t w a s the result of human endeavors; its g o a l w a s the creation of an artificial beauty that more often than not elaborated upon other esteemed h u m a n creations. A s w a s the case with his best Parnassian sonnets, those of " M i museo i d e a l " of Nieve, w h i c h were based on the paintings of G u s t a v e M o r e a u , his p o e m s d r a w upon painting, poetry, and crafted materials of all sorts; they e v o k e exotic and imaginary settings and affirm the man28 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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made environment of the city and its luxurious urban interiors. C a s a l makes little effort to hide the influence of his predecessors. T h e anguished sentimentality of the R o m a n t i c s (Zorrilla, Bécquer, Heine, Leopardi), the acute and demanding aestheticism of the Parnassians (Gautier, Heredia, C o p p é e ) , the subdued attraction to occult realities of the Symbolists (Baudelaire, Verlaine), and the naughty self-indulgence of the Decadents (Baudelaire, Huysmans) are openly present throughout his w o r k , in his first t w o b o o k s of verse, Hojas al viento, Nieve, and in his third, Bustos y rimas, w h i c h w a s prepared during his life but published shortly after his death and w h i c h contains both prose and poetry. T h i s exaltation of artificiality is not the only feature that distinguishes C a s a l ' s poetry from M a r t i ' s . C a s a l ' s dissatisfaction w i t h the status quo does not generate, as in M a r t i , an optimistic, energetic, o u t w a r d thrust, a push t o w a r d change. Q u i t e the contrary, his poetry is marked by an i n w a r d turn, the exploration of subtle psychic states, and the presence of suffering, death, b o r e d o m , bitterness, inadaptability, impotence, and an inexhaustible longing for escape. A s the titles of his first t w o collections highlight, C a s a l sought deliverance from the indifferent w o r l d that surrounded him in the strange, the foreign (European and Oriental), the sick, the dying, and even the unpleasant. A s different as M a r t i ' s and C a s a l ' s responses are, it is this rejection of their immediate circumstances that ties them together and makes them both Modernists. Each in his o w n w a y struggles to c o m e to terms with the changing Spanish A m e r i c a n scene and each finds in poetry - creative, free, responsive poetry - a consolation of sorts. M a r t i ' s poetry is more spontaneous, C a s a l ' s more studied and refined with a strong emphasis upon pictorial splendor, verbal elegance, and formal innovation - greater accentual flexibility in hendecasyllables, imaginative recourse to nineand ten-syllable lines, mastery of the m o n o r h y m e tercet. Nevertheless the efforts of both poets reflect conscientious attempts to find a language with w h i c h to reply to the Spanish A m e r i c a that w a s taking shape at the time.

José A s u n c i ó n Silva Like C a s a l ' s , José A s u n c i ó n Suva's life w a s colored by an attraction to elegance and indulgence and by a series of tragic events w h i c h ultimately culminated w i t h his suicide in 1896. Silva g r e w up in a B o g o t á dominated by a conservative and provincial o u t l o o k . His family, in contrast, w a s k n o w n for its interest in and support of the arts as well as its enthusiasm for imported styles, luxury items, and cosmopolitan trends. Suva's father w r o t e artículos de costumbres and the family store w a s recognized as a center of literary activity. T h e same store, w h i c h carried the latest European fashions that tended to be of little demand in B o g o t á , w a s the 29 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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source of tremendous financial turmoil and eventually led the family to bankruptcy. Suva's despondency over these economic w o e s , w h i c h forced him out of school and into the w o r k p l a c e , w a s c o m p o u n d e d by personal losses. His grandfather w a s killed in a violent attack on the family ranch the year before he w a s born. His great uncle, w h o had m o v e d to Paris after the attack, died shortly before Silva arrived in Europe. Even greater strains were produced by the death of his father in 1887 and, in 1891, the death of his beloved sister Elvira, to w h o m his famous " N o c t u r n o " is dedicated. After resolving the bankruptcy of the family business, Silva sought a diplomatic post as Secretary of the C o l o m b i a Legation in C a r a c a s . T h o u g h his literary efforts there were received w i t h acclaim, he met political difficulties and returned h o m e a few months later. T h e ship on w h i c h he sailed w a s d a m a g e d on reaching the shores of C o l o m b i a and began to sink. T h o u g h he survived, he lost the bulk of his unpublished manuscripts from earlier in his life and those that he had written during his stay in Venezuela. T h i s misfortune provided one more devastating b l o w to the poet, w h o already felt that life w a s filled with disappointments and defeats. Silva had occasionally recited his p o e m s in public and had published a few, but on the w h o l e his w o r k w a s not well k n o w n in C o l o m b i a during his lifetime. T w e l v e years after his death, a few of his published pieces and some fifty other poems were gathered together in a v o l u m e entitled Poesías, to w h i c h M i g u e l de U n a m u n o w r o t e an enthusiastic p r o l o g u e . Since then at least fifty-three additional p o e m s have been found to belong to the Silva opus, w h i c h has been divided into three groupings: El libro de versos, containing p o e m s from 1891 to 1896 and organized by Silva himself, Gotas amargas, and Versos varios. In addition to his poetry, Silva w r o t e "artistic transpositions," in w h i c h he aspired to capture the subtleties of color and shading, and his famous novel De sobremesa, w h i c h w a s written in the form of a diary and w h i c h evokes the longings, tensions, ambiguities, and anguish of a sensitive and involved intellectual responding to the developing crises in Spanish A m e r i c a at the turn of the century. Like the Silva of " A l pie de la estatua" (written during his last year of life about the disillusionments of the great Bolívar), José Fernández, the novel's protagonist, reflects not only upon artistic, moral, and religious concerns but also upon the changing political situation. Y e t it is the obsessive, morose, unstable Fernández and his statements about poetry that reveal the most about Suva's poetic production. W h e n Silva has Fernández declare that he did not w a n t his poetry to state but rather to suggest, he w a s speaking for himself. M o r e than any other poet of his generation, Silva w r o t e under the influence of symbolist 30


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poetics with its g o a l of transforming the music of nature in an evocative language that captures the eternal and profound realities that lie hidden behind the surface of existence. In " A l pie de la estatua" Silva expresses the concepts that D a r i o , in the same year, placed at the center of his " C o l o q u i o de los c e n t a u r o s " and that Baudelaire had outlined in his famous " C o r r e s p o n d a n c e s " : Fija En ella sus miradas el poeta, C o n quien conversa el alma de las cosas, En son que lo fascina, Para quien tienen una voz secreta Las leves lamas grises y verdosas Que al brotar en la estatua alabastrina Del beso de los siglos son senales Y a quien narran leyendas misteriosas Las sombras de las viejas catedrales. [It [the statue] is the focus of the poet, with w h o m the soul of all things converses, in a way that fascinates him, for w h o m the light greenish and gray patina has a secret voice and, upon issuing from the alabaster statue, is a sign of the kiss of centuries, and for w h o m the shadows of the old cathedrals narrate mysterious legends.] For Silva nature is eternal, divine, and harmonious; it speaks to the poet w h o s e task is to translate into poetry its cosmic signs and symbols and its hidden and vital forces. Silva's great talent, w h i c h is epitomized in his most acclaimed p o e m , " N o c t u r n o , " w a s the creative use of the rhythmic resonances of the Spanish language - enhanced by a free use of repetition together w i t h the symbolic evocation of subtle psychological and spiritual states that respect the limits of cognitive comprehension and the imper meability of certain mysteries. In " N o c t u r n o " the interplay of light and s h a d o w , intertwined in the central and structuring metaphor of " l a sombra n u p c i a l , " suggests a reality that evades precise definition. In poems such as " V e j e c e s " or " L a v o z de las c o s a s " the longevity of the spirit is contrasted w i t h the fugacity of individual existence. Despite the solace thus e v o k e d there remains in many p o e m s a sense of suffering and loss reflective of Silva's tendency to indulge in a mournful and morose investigation of unhappiness. In some p o e m s from Gotas amargas, a collection that Silva seems to have planned to leave unpublished, suffering results from the incomprehension of the scientific c o m m u n i t y , w h i c h is m o c k e d in acerbic and sarcastic tones. T h e resulting satire highlights the pain, anguish, and anger of the modernist struggle w i t h " b o u r g e o i s m o d e r n i t y " and w i t h the dominant positivistic values of the day. W i t h his sights set on the exploration of the mysteries that elude modern science, 3i



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Silva had patience neither for Parnassian aesthetic play nor for popular but superficial imitations of D a r i o ' s w o r k , a point well made in his satiric "Sinfonia color de fresa con leche."

Ruben Dario O n January 1 8 , 1 8 6 7 , Felix R u b e n G a r c i a Sarmiento w a s born in a small t o w n k n o w n today as C i u d a d D a r i o . T h e D a r i o by w h i c h he w a s k n o w n all his life w a s not so much a p s e u d o n y m as a patronymic, the last name used by his father as well as his grandfather. Shortly after his birth his parents separated and he w a s taken to live w i t h his great aunt and her husband in L e o n . T h u s began his peripatetic life w h i c h t o o k him to all corners of the Hispanic w o r l d driven, for the most part, by economic necessity. By the age of twelve he had already published his first p o e m s . D u r i n g these early years there were frequent trips between the cities of M a n a g u a , G r a n a d a , and L e o n with, in 1882, a year's stay in El Salvador. T h e r e the poet Francisco G a v i d i a introduced D a r i o to French literature - to the formal beauty of Parnassian verse, to the gnostic and pantheistic writings of V i c t o r H u g o , and to the Alexandrine and hexameter. By 1886 w h e n he left Central A m e r i c a for Chile, D a r i o had read widely a m o n g the Spanish classics as well as selected Greek poetry in translation and contemporary French verse published in the Revue des Deux Mondes. His three years in Chile, from 1886 to 1889, offered the y o u n g D a r i o an opportunity to e x p a n d the arena of his cultural explorations. T h e y provided a cosmopolitan setting, friendship with many writers and intellectuals, and contact with a society that, because of its g r o w i n g prosperity, enjoyed sophisticated manners of behavior, dress, and patron age. D u r i n g this time, D a r i o w r o t e for important newspapers like Santiago's La Epoca, developed an elegant and effective prose style, and published his first b o o k s of poetry Abrojos and Rimas. H e also w r o t e the novel Emelina (with Eduardo Poirier) and the a w a r d - w i n n i n g Canto epico a las glorias de Chile. Even in his earliest poetry there are hints of the metrical experimentation, the emotional depth, and the metaphorical brilliance that w o u l d characterize his mature production; still stronger at this point w a s the influence of his immediate predecessors, most notably Becquer and C a m p o a m o r . Azul. . . w a s the w o r k that made D a r i o famous and by w h i c h critics used to date the beginning of M o d e r n i s m . T h e already-cited letter by Juan Valera turned D a r i o into the focus of attention for those interested in the revolutionary but still unnamed literary movement that w a s taking shape in Spanish A m e r i c a . It is n o w widely agreed that the greatest innovation appears in the collection's short stories and vignettes, written under the 32Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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influence of M e n d e s , Flaubert, H u g o , and Z o l a . T h e y s h o w D a r i o ' s eagerness to experiment with many styles and modes of discourse, his enthusiasm for the various arts, and his desire to break, as the R o m a n t i c s had done, the restrictive confines of established genres. M o s t important, h o w e v e r , w a s the underlying disillusionment — w h i c h he shared w i t h many other Spanish Americans writing at the time - w i t h the mundane and pedestrian, especially w h e n they imply a withering of aesthetic and spiritual p o w e r s . " E l r u b i , " " E l satiro s o r d o , " " E l palacio del s o l , " " E l rey b u r g u e s , " and, perhaps most directly, the introductory section of " E n C h i l e " all criticize the limited and limiting vision of bourgeois material ism, science, and technology. " E n C h i l e " begins w i t h a paragraph-long sentence that suggests the fundamental focus of D a r i o ' s writings at this point. Without brushes, without palette, without paper, without pencil, fleeing the excitement and confusion, the machines and bundles, the monotonous noise of the trolleys and the jostling of horses with their ringing of hooves on the stones, the throng of merchants, the shouts of vendors, the incessant bustle and unending fervor of this port in search of impressions and scenes, Ricardo, an incorrigible lyric poet, climbed up to Happy Hill, which, elegant like a great flowering rock, displays its green sides, its mound crowned by smiling houses terraced at the summit, homes surrounded by gardens, with waving curtains of vines, cages of birds, vases of flowers, attractive railings, and blond children with angelic faces. T h e w o r l d of the modern, industrial city w i t h its traffic, noise, and newspapers (the commercial side of writing) is left behind in search of "impressions and scenes," that is, in search of a nature filtered through, captured in (like the caged birds and cut flowers), and idealized by art (blond children w i t h angelic faces). H e leaves the V a l p a r a i s o " t h a t performs transactions and that w a l k s like a gust, that peoples the stores and invades the b a n k s " in hopes of finding " e l inmenso espacio a z u l " ["the immense blue space"] - not only the free, clear sky of beauty and tranquility but also the source of artistic vision, w h i c h converts the author into a seer capable of recording the profound realities of existence, an existence that is in essence beauty and h a r m o n y and not the crass commercialization of the urban setting. T h i s is the point D a r i o alluded to in his title. Azul. . . recalls H u g o ' s Uart, cest Vazur and therefore evokes the ideal, the infinite, and the eternal - all perceived through and recreated in art. T h e poems of the first edition of Azul. . . reflect the same tensions and longings mixed w i t h the added element of erotic passion. " E l ano l i r i c o , " w h i c h begins the poetic selection, is an escape from the prosaic similar to that found in " E n C h i l e " except the exotic, fanciful, and exquisite settings 33 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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underscore a fundamental aspiration t o w a r d a harmony that is intimately linked to the fulfillment of sexual desire. W o m a n , more than the poet's M u s e , is the other w h o complements and completes and w i t h w h o m the poet attains a vision of beauty, harmony, and artistic perfection that is simultaneously in tune w i t h and supported by nature. T h e distance between this dreamed perfection and contemporary, " c i v i l i z e d " existence is presented in " E s t i v a l , " where the flow of sexual energy, w h i c h is portrayed as the animating force in nature and the inexorable bond between male and female, is disrupted by a cruel and senseless act on the part of the Prince of W a l e s . P o w e r and modern technology burst upon a scene of lush sensuality and animalistic eroticism interrupting the natural order of things. " E s t i v a l " thus emphasizes h o w uninformed human intervention destabilizes the balance of creation unlocking violence, pain, and discord. For the 1890 edition of Azul. . . D a r i o added a number of poems that highlight his rapid maturation as a poet. " V e n u s " continues the themes of the earlier edition while it reasserts - w i t h its unusual seventeen-syllable lines - efforts to expand the poetic potential of Spanish. T h e idealization of love seen before is m a x i m i z e d as the unnamed object of desire fuses with the star/goddess V e n u s . Here, h o w e v e r , the unreflective hope for ecstasy of the earlier poems is placed in doubt. T h e expectation of a perfect union in w h i c h personal and artistic goals are achieved is dashed as the heaven from w h i c h V e n u s l o o k s d o w n upon the poet is turned into an abyss of unfulfilled and possibly unfulflllable longings. T h e other additional sonnets included in the 1890 edition deal w i t h C a u p o l i c a n , Leconte de Lisle, Catulle M e n d e s , W a l t W h i t m a n , J. J. Palma, Salvador D i a z M i r o n , and Alessandro Parodi and point to D a r i o ' s preoccupation with poetic discourse. Here D a r i o praises those features consonant with his goals for modernist verse: a soul that is in touch with the w o r l d and capable of prophetic p o w e r s ( " W a l t W h i t m a n " ) , a song that echoes the rhythmic pulsation of the ocean and that contains the mysteries of the Orient ("Leconte de Lisle"), classic grace and intimate k n o w l e d g e ("Catulle M e n d e s " ) , and powerful poetry that proclaims the freedom of the new nations of the N e w W o r l d ("Salvador D i a z M i r o n " ) . Between the first and second editions of Azul. . . D a r i o w a s confronted by serious financial difficulties that forced his return to N i c a r a g u a in February of 1889. After a few months in N i c a r a g u a he left for El Salvador to manage La Union. T h e r e he fell in love w i t h Rafaela Contreras and married her on June 26, 1890. Just then a military c o u p overthrew his protector, President Francisco M e n e n d e z , and D a r i o w a s compelled to leave for G u a t e m a l a . In G u a t e m a l a he became friends w i t h Jorge C a s t r o , w h o introduced him to theosophy and other occult beliefs that rounded out the readings that he had begun earlier w i t h G a v i d i a . W h i l e in 34 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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G u a t e m a l a he also published the augmented version of Azul. . . Y e t , because of the demise of the newspaper that he w a s directing, Rafaela and he were once again obliged to m o v e on, this time to C o s t a R i c a , where his son R u b e n D a r i o Contreras w a s born on N o v e m b e r 1 2 , 1 8 9 1 . By M a y of 1892 further financial problems caused D a r i o to leave his wife and son as he returned to G u a t e m a l a alone. T h e r e he w a s named Secretary to the N i c a r a g u a n delegation to the Fourth Centenary of the Discovery of A m e r i c a to be celebrated in M a d r i d on O c t o b e r 1 2 , 1892. In M a d r i d he met the old guard of Spanish letters including Z o r r i l l a , Valera, Castelar, N u n e z de A r c e , Pardo B a z a n , and C a m p o a m o r as well as the Spanish Modernists headed by Salvador R u e d a , for w h o s e En tropel he w r o t e a verse prologue. W h i l e in Spain D a r i o extended his fame and consolidated his stature as leader of the modernist movement. After a few months he returned to N i c a r a g u a w i t h a stopover first in H a v a n a so that he could meet Julian del C a s a l w h o s e Hojas al viento and Nieve had explored issues similar to those that D a r i o w a s confronting in his o w n w o r k . U p o n his return to his homeland he learned of his wife's death in El Salvador. T h o u g h he a l w a y s remembered Rafaela as the ideal bride, he w a s quickly remarried - perhaps w i t h no choice in the matter - to R o s a r i o Emelina M u r i l l o . In A p r i l of 1893 he w a s named Consul-general of C o l o m b i a in Buenos Aires. D a r i o left R o s a r i o in Panama and headed for Buenos Aires by w a y of N e w Y o r k and Paris. In N e w Y o r k he met M a r t i , w h o s e w o r k - especially the prose - D a r i o had long admired. In Paris, D a r i o witnessed the heyday of Symbolism and met with Enrique G o m e z Carrillo, Alejandro S a w a , Paul Verlaine, and Jean M o r e a s . D a r i o arrived in Buenos Aires in A u g u s t of 1893. T h o u g h the position as Consul-general did not last long, he w a s not totally w i t h o u t support; he had already been invited to w o r k for the best newspapers in Argentina. D u r i n g his five years in Buenos Aires, from 1893 1898, D a r i o continued to write both prose and poetry. H e founded the Revista de America with Jaimes Freyre and published, in 1896, an important and revealing series of articles on modern European and A m e r i c a n authors entitled Los raros. A b o u t the same time he began a novel called El hombre de oro. It w a s , nevertheless, the publication of Prosas prof anas in 1896 that marked a watershed in the modernist movement. D a r i o saw himself at the head of the dominant Hispanic literary movement of the day, in full control of his talents, and in a position to challenge - w i t h his inventive title, his poetic innovations, and the overt sexuality of most of the p o e m s conservative critics, unsympathetic members of society, and less creative rivals. H e w a s able to assume the responsibilities left to him by the death of so many of the other early Modernists because of his encyclopedic grasp of culture, his syncretic imagination, and his keen sense of direction and purpose. His views stated in the non-manifesto manifesto at the t o


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beginning of Prosas profanas, "Palabras liminares," and in its three masterly introductory p o e m s constitute a careful, comprehensive, and insightful commentary on M o d e r n i s m , one reflective of the essential elements that shaped the m o v e m e n t since its inception, one that demands detailed attention. Prosas prof anas is often described as a youthful, exuberant w o r k full of exotic frivolity, playful imagination, and pleasure. W h e n D a r i o himself refers to the content of the collection and its title he directs attention t o w a r d sexual passion - a sexual passion that is inextricably linked to art, poetic creation, music, and religion. H e w r o t e : "I have said, in the pink M a s s of my youth, my antiphons, my sequences, and my profane proses . . . R i n g , bells of gold, bells of silver; ring every day, calling me to the party where eyes of fire shine, and the roses of mouths bleed unique delights." T h e proses, like the antiphons and sequences, are verses or hymns said or sung during the M a s s . D a r i o plays w i t h these medieval allusions, breaks expectations regarding the genre in question, and equates divine love and religious devotion w i t h sexual exploits. W h i l e pleasure is certainly at issue, so is "proper b e h a v i o r " and decorum. H o w e v e r much the y o u n g D a r i o w a s preoccupied with sexua lity, he w a s also fascinated - not unlike the R o m a n t i c s and Symbolists before him - by the limits, restrictions, and constraints imposed on behavior, language, and vision by society, perhaps the same limits that tortured C a s a l and haunted Silva. A s a result, the sociocultural context of M o d e r n i s m is never far from his mind. H e begins "Palabras liminares" with regret over the lack of understanding c o m m o n to the general public and to professionals. It is art that sets him - and the others that he w o u l d rally to his cause - apart. Y e t art is not imitation; it is the transgressing of limits, it is the reinterpretation and revitalization of habit and custom by each artist. T h e interplay between poetry and society reappears as the aristocratic and exotic elements of art are offered in response to and escape from the materialism that flourished at the expense of aesthetic and spiritual concerns. It is this conflict of values that forms the b a c k g r o u n d to D a r i o ' s declaration that "I detest the life and times to w h i c h I w a s b o r n . " T h i s statement is not, h o w e v e r , a rejection of Spanish A m e r i c a . Q u i t e the contrary, D a r i o finds poetry in " o u r A m e r i c a , " as he did in Azul. . ., in "the old things," in Palenke and Utatlan, in the sensual and refined Inca, and in the great M o n t e z u m a . A s is clear from his o w n remarks, the thrust is t o w a r d the cosmopolis and the future in both of w h i c h the Spanish, Spanish A m e r i c a n , and European (Parisian) w o u l d find a balance. T h i s future milieu w o u l d facilitate the creation of a modern mode of discourse, that is, a poetry that responds to the constraints of modern life by rediscovering the soul of language and its musical nature ("Since each 36


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w o r d has a soul, there is in each verse, in addition to verbal harmony, an ideal melody. Frequently, the music comes exclusively from the idea."). T h e reference to the soul of language implies a body w h i c h , in D a r i o ' s poetry, is clearly female. For language to become poetry it must be inseminated w i t h ideas that are in essence " a n ideal m e l o d y . " T h i s image of poetic creation adds a revealing dimension to the role of w o m a n and to the overall sexuality of Prosas profanas. For example, with regard to influences, he declares " m y wife is from my homeland; my lover, from Paris." Similarly, he concludes "Palabras liminares" w i t h the mandate: " A n d the first l a w , creator: create. Let the eunuch snort. W h e n a M u s e gives y o u a child, let the other eight be left pregnant." Despite the jocular tone of this c o m m a n d , D a r i o is never blind to the possibility that he may not find the female other that he seeks. T h i s concern continues into the first three p o e m s of Prosas profanas. D a r i o begins w i t h Eulalia of " E r a un aire suave. . . " By characterizing her - or, actually, her golden laughter - as cruel, D a r i o softens the bold and ambitious declaration of artistic goals of the prose preface. H e a c k n o w l e d g e s the possible recalcitrance on the part of poetic language to be molded to the form he envisions. By calling her eternal, he affirms his aspiration - and that of the other Modernists - to take Spanish A m e r i c a n discourse out of its limited and anachronistic present and to have it become " m o d e r n " through a syncretic exaltation of the beauty and art of all ages, primarily as they c o m e to him filtered through contemporary French sensibilities. For this reason, the second part of "Era un aire s u a v e . . . " is a series of questions regarding the setting of the first part. T h e repeated proposing of alternative periods to w h i c h the scene described could belong suggests the degree to w h i c h D a r i o aspires to transcend temporal and spatial limitations and to achieve universality. T h e human, particularistic elements are clearly subsumed to the creation of atmos phere and tone; passion becomes role-playing; eroticism becomes art. A t the perfect point in the timeless evening of the p o e m (in the last three stanzas of the first section), surrounded by auspicious and evocative music and an ivory-white s w a n of formal beauty and fluid grace, the poet will join with Eulalia, vanquishing his rivals, the " v i z c o n d e r u b i o " ["the blond viscount"] and the " a b a t e j o v e n " ["the y o u n g a b b o t " ] . T h i s reference to the defeat of his social and literary competitors offers some solace, but the poet's happiness is mitigated by the fact that there is no lasting amorous conquest. O n the contrary, he remains her page, her servant. Both sections of " E r a un aire s u a v e . . . " end with references to Eulalia's m o c k i n g laughter. W i t h this emphasis on Eulalia's aloof nature and the possible intractabi lity of poetic language, " E r a un aire s u a v e . . . " anticipates the lament as well as the images of " Y o persigo una f o r m a . . .," w h i c h w a s added as the last p o e m to the 1901 edition of Prosas profanas. Y e t whereas " Y o persigo una 37 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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f o r m a . . . " pretends to decry the poet's limitations ( " Y o persigo una forma que no encuentra mi estilo, / . . . / Y no hallo sino la palabra que h u y a , / la iniciación melódica que de la flauta fluye..." ["I pursue a form that my style does not find, I . . . I and I find only the w o r d that flees, / the melodic introduction that flows from the flute.. . " ] ) , " E r a u n a i r e s u a v e . . . " s u g g e s t s cautious optimism as D a r í o enters the fétes galantes and competes w i t h Verlaine and his other (imported) role models and rivals. T h i s sense of response to the proliferation of cultural elements that dominated European and Spanish A m e r i c a n values at the end of the nineteenth century is central as well to " D i v a g a c i ó n , " the second p o e m in Prosas profanas. " D i v a g a c i ó n " is filled w i t h cosmopolitan references, exquisite vocabulary, and esoteric proper names. M o r e o v e r , like " E r a un aire suave . . . , " it deals w i t h a beloved that is much more than a possible love interest. Y e t , throughout his poetic journey across the globe, he finds that no one w o m a n can satisfy; no one style can fulfill his longing for an original mode of discourse. T h e poet's aspiration to a comprehensive grasp of reality takes him through a literary " m u s e u m , " w h i c h he ultimately leaves behind. H e affirms instead the p o w e r of poetry, through w h i c h he claims divine k n o w l e d g e and authority. H e makes this claim in the final three stanzas of the p o e m in w h i c h he leads the reader off the map into the w o r l d of the transcendental, thereby emphasizing the divine mission that he strives to achieve, a mission he shared w i t h the less selfassured Silva. T h e savior of poetry appears - as he does in " S o n a t i n a , " the next p o e m of the collection - highlighting D a r i o ' s fundamental concern with his o w n success in choosing the proper vessel to receive his poetic energy, the proper language to inseminate w i t h ideal music. A t the end of " S o n a t i n a " the sad princess is given hope for happiness, love, life, and salvation in the form of el feliz caballero que te adora sin verte, y que llega de lejos, vencedor de la Muerte, a encenderte los labios con su beso de amor! the happy knight that adores you without seeing you and that arrives from far away, conqueror of Death, to enflame your lips with his kiss of love! N o matter h o w frivolous " S o n a t i n a " appears at first w i t h its nurseryrhyme rhythm and its fanciful gardens and palace, by the final stanza the profound nature of the fairy-tale couple becomes evident. T h e knight w h o arrives mounted on his w i n g e d steed, victor of D e a t h , is more than the proverbial "Prince C h a r m i n g " w h o appears in time to revive the lovesick princess. T h e linking of the hero/savior with Pegasus, the horse of the M u s e s , identifies the hero as an artist. His ability to lead his love - and his readers — out of the imperfect present into a paradisiacal future recalls the 38 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Christ-like attributes that become a recurrent feature of D a r i o ' s later poetry about poetic responsibility. If the knight w h o arrives at the end of " S o n a t i n a " most closely corresponds to the p o e t / h e r o / s a v i o r , the prin cess w h o awaits him is the female consort of the male creator. It is here that the central image and the title of the p o e m s h o w their fundamental union, one that is etymological. T h e rich, elaborately housed princess serves as a female other, a type of Muse, w h o makes possible the creative articulateness of the male voice. She a l l o w s him to fulfill his role as savior by turning language into music. T h i s goal is further emphasized by the rhythmic virtuosity of the p o e m , w h i c h is written in superb dactylic Alexandrines. T h e interplay a m o n g language, music, and poet thus delineated in " S o n a t i n a " is a continuation of D a r i o ' s attempts to clarify his artistic aims w h i c h he had begun in "Palabras liminares," "Era un aire suave . . . , " and " D i v a g a c i ó n . " D a r í o holds that poetic language has lost its vitality and color; it is imprisoned in a golden vessel. T h e music that should be heard is silent; the atmosphere is stifling, unimaginative, and uninspired. T h e objects that have c o m e to be associated w i t h the princess's imprisonment as well as with her physical and spiritual decline are boldy denounced. Y e t D a r i o ' s detailed rejection is just the opposite of w h a t it claims to be. It becomes a w a y of possessing, internalizing, and incorporating into his art those aspects that he pretends to d i s o w n . H e disdains the palace and its wealth as incapable of providing spiritual gratification. In fact they appear as obstacles to k n o w l e d g e and distractions that prevent the enlightened from seeing beyond the superficial trappings of life (as in " E l rey b u r g u é s " of Azul. . . and in " P o é t i c a " by M a r t i ) . A t the same time, h o w e v e r , he takes possession of the opulence through description. T h i s ambivalent position w i t h regard to the riches of the palace reflects an even greater struggle - one c o m m o n a m o n g modernist authors. T h e poet challenges the superficial materialism of the bourgeois society in w h i c h he lives. H e strives to assert the w o r t h of his creation in an environment that tends to ignore the value of his art, k n o w l e d g e , and spiritual insight. T h e poet fights for the respect and esteem that he feels he deserves by taking up the w e a p o n s of the enemy - wealth and opulence and by poetically rendering them impotent. A s the princess's wealth is made subservient to the spiritual w e a l t h offered by the poet, the value of poetic vision and artistic achievement is doubly raised a b o v e everyday reality ("the life and times to w h i c h [he] w a s b o r n " ) : as clear a response to the established order of life as M a r t i s , C a s a l ' s , or Suva's. O n l y after the princess (poetic language) recognizes the appropriate (inferior) position of material wealth can the poet fulfill his superior destiny. In short, the poetic goals outlined in " S o n a t i n a " and the other pieces examined point to a political and philosophic awareness behind the frivolity, musicality, 39 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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and aesthetic play w i t h w h i c h Prosas profanas has generally been characterized. Assessments of the collection have tended to be shaped by the o v e r w h e l m i n g impact of its formal artistry and conceptual innovation by w h i c h D a r í o continued the discovery or recovery of a large variety of verse forms begun by earlier Modernists. In addition to the dactylic A l e x a n drine of " S o n a t i n a , " D a r í o resuscitated verses of twelve syllables in " E l o g i o de la seguidilla" and the poetry of the cancioneros of the fifteenth century in " D e z i r e s , layes y c a n c i o n e s . " T h r o u g h caesuras placed at different points and the use of enjambement, he further expanded the musical effect of traditional forms. T h e great flexibility of poetic prose appears in " E l pais del s o l , " and the synaesthetic mixing of music and color is evident in "Sinfonía en gris m a y o r , " a p o e m inspired by the Parnassian art of Gautier. Y e t in all these w o r k s the passing pleasure of artistic experimentation and/or of the sexual pas de deux is an aspect of profound, enduring, social, and even religious concerns. T h e resolution of these and other apparent contradictions is proposed in D a r i o ' s masterpiece of this period, " C o l o q u i o de los c e n t a u r o s . " O n the magical " G o l d e n Island" the centaurs strive for a reconciliation of the tensions within their composite nature and a reintegration into the harmonious and w e l l - w o r k i n g universe. A s Q u i r ó n helps them perceive w h a t is evident to the poet/seer, namely, that the language of nature reveals the hidden order of the c o s m o s , they c o m e to understand that the acceptance of the fundamental accord of all existence - the essential unity of the bestial and the divine, g o o d and evil, male and female, life and death - is the key to the paradisiacal vision that they pursue. T h e neoplatonic and pantheistic premises of the esoteric Pythagoreanism that underpins the w o r l d view of " C o l o q u i o " are further developed in " L a s ánforas de E p i c u r o , " a series of poems that w a s added along with " C o s a s del C i d " and " D e z i r e s , layes y c a n c i o n e s " to the 1901 edition of Prosas profanas. T h e s e delicate and thoughtful poems elaborate, w i t h a new-found grace and transcendent quality, previously expressed themes: the enduring presence of G o d throughout creation, the harmonious nature of the c o s m o s , the reconciliation of opposites, love, poetry, and poetic responsibility. By 1901 D a r i o ' s perspective, while still influenced by classical and European styles, tends to the universal and timeless. T h i s trajectory w o u l d reach its zenith in Cantos de vida y esperanza. Los cisnes y otros poemas, in w h i c h D a r í o will reveal himself to be a poet w h o is more sure of himself and more willing to express his sense of difference his sense of being Spanish A m e r i c a n . T h e imported models that d o m i nated his poetic imagination in Prosas profanas will have receded. His concerns will reflect his sad awareness of the passage of time and of the 40


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youthful squandering of energies. T h e y will also address directly the sociopolitical context only alluded to previously. After living in Buenos Aires for five years, D a r í o returned to Spain in 1898 as correspondent for La Nación. H e w a s to remain in Europe for several years, residing in Barcelona, M a d r i d , and Paris. H e also traveled in Italy and southern Spain, finding much to admire throughout his jour neys. Between 1902 and 1905 he w r o t e a number of articles w h i c h he later published as Opiniones. In 1906, after a trip to Brazil, he w a s named N i c a r a g u a n C o n s u l in Paris and then, in 1907, N i c a r a g u a n A m b a s s a d o r to Spain. T h o u g h during these years he w a s at the height of his career and fame, he never fully resolved the financial and personal problems that plagued him from the beginning. H e did, h o w e v e r , find a supportive and caring female c o m p a n i o n , Francisca Sánchez, w h o , in 1900, bore him a daughter and, in 1903, a son, w h o m he nicknamed Phocás and referred to in a p o e m published in his next major w o r k , Cantos de vida y esperanza. Tragically Phocás lived just a short time. A second son, also called R u b é n D a r í o Sánchez w a s born in 1907. Like Prosas profanas, Cantos de vida y esperanza begins w i t h an important prose introduction that responds to the critics of the day and that clarifies a number of points already discussed. D a r í o defends his poetry by emphasizing its grounding in the "aristocracy of t h o u g h t " and the "nobility of art" w h i c h , in turn, continue to be offered as antidotes to the mediocrity, intellectual stultification, and aesthetic superficiality that he sees in contemporary society. W i t h pride he recognizes that M o d e r n ism, unlike previous literary movements, originated in Spanish A m e r i c a and later spread to Spain, although he slants the historical picture s o m e w h a t by proclaiming himself the founder of the movement. T h o u g h not the first Modernist, he certainly gave to M o d e r n i s m a breadth of vision, a philosophy of language, and an intellectual depth that unified disparate elements from diverse countries and a l l o w e d him to be con sidered its head. H e also increased, as he notes, against entrenched resistance, the flexibility of Spanish poetic expression, maintaining as his goal a pure and direct reflection of his view of beauty. W i t h this apparently simple statement, D a r í o reaffirms his links to romantic literary theory and its emphasis on art as the evocation of the profound realities of existence as they are perceived by and filtered through the unencumbered and undistorted soul of the poet. H e repeats this position in the first p o e m of the collection, " Y o soy aquel que ayer no más d e c í a , " w h e n he asserts the importance of sincerity and the dangers of artifice. A s D a r í o had made clear in " L a fuente" from " L a s ánforas de E p i c u r o , " modernist art demands that poets be true to themselves and to the music that they find in themselves. D a r í o concludes the " P r e f a c i o " by pointing out that this truth 4i


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includes open and direct discussion of the social and political concerns made more pressing than ever before by the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r of 1898 and US intervention in the creation of Panama in 1903. In Cantos de vida y esperanza there is, in turn, a greater enthusiasm for his Spanish and Spanish A m e r i c a n heritage - an enthusiasm that carries over into his next collection, El canto errante. " Y o soy aquel que ayer no más d e c í a " can be read as a poetic complement and continuation of the introduction, a brilliant reappraisal of his literary career and his personal life as well as an insightful declaration of his n e w orientation. W i t h opening echoes of H u g o ' s " C e l u i q u i . . . , " references to his cosmopolitan embrace of art, and refutations of having achieved formal perfection at the expense of emotional depth and honesty, D a r í o reviews his early endeavors. It becomes clear, h o w e v e r , that he has n o w entered a new phase, one in w h i c h the primary importance of art is its redemptive p o w e r w h i c h makes it possible for the poet and reader to become one with the harmony of the universe within the "sagrada s e l v a " ["sacred forest"] of controlled passions and resolved tensions. D a r í o calmly admits that the promise of salvation is not absolute: la adusta perfección jamás se entrega, y el secreto ideal duerme en la sombra [austere perfection never gives itself up, and the ideal secret sleeps in the shadow] Y e t he consoles himself in the last stanza by affirming that the journey t o w a r d death goes by w a y of Bethlehem w h e n virtue and discipline determine the course. T h r o u g h o u t Cantos de vida y esperanza D a r í o develops the issues presented in these t w o introductory pieces. H e confronts the passage of time and the inevitability of death ( " C a n c i ó n de o t o ñ o en p r i m a v e r a , " " A Phocás el c a m p e s i n o " ) ; he struggles w i t h his religious doubts and despair; and he affirms the divinity of his poetic mission ( " P e g a s o , " " ¡ T o r r e s de Dios! ¡Poetas!"). W h e n traditional beliefs fail him, faith in art, in the harmony of the universe, and in the perfectibility of man as revealed by art become the basis for hope ("Mientras tenéis, oh negros c o r a z o n e s , " " H e l i o s , " " F i l o s o f í a , " " A y , triste del que un día. . .," " C a r a c o l " ) . Even love becomes an aspect of his search for transcendence. Influenced by esoteric thought, D a r i o ' s erotic poetry is no longer as playful, lighthearted, or defiantly rebellious as it had been throughout most of Prosas profanas; it n o w evokes the eternal order and perfection of creation ("Por un m o m e n t o , oh Cisne, juntaré mis a n h e l o s , " " ¡ A n t e s de t o d o , gloria a ti, L e d a ! " " ¡ C a r n e , celeste carne de la mujer! A r c i l l a , " " E n el país de las A l e g o r í a s , " " A m o , a m a s , " " P r o g r a m a matinal"). Y e t modern life repeat42 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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edly cuts him off from this sense of well-being and belonging, leaving him either to recall the religious answers of his youth ( " C a n t o de esperanza," " S p e s , " " ¿ Q u é signo haces, oh Cisne, con tu encorvado c u e l l o , " " ¡ O h , terremoto mental!" " E l verso sutil que pasa o se p o s a " ) or to suffer the anguish of total despair, a despair w h i c h is often exacerbated by an o v e r w h e l m i n g sense of guilt ("La dulzura del ángelus," " N o c t u r n o i , " " M e l a n c o l í a , " " N o c t u r n o 11," " L o fatal"). Unable to see beyond the chaos and disorder around him, he accuses himself of failing to fulfill the divine destiny he claimed for himself as poet/seer in " A l m a m í a " of " L a s ánforas de E p i c u r o . " W h i l e D a r i o ' s political poetry - even those poems such as "Salutación del optimista" or " A R o o s e v e l t " that express concern regarding the strength of the United States - often strikes t o d a y ' s reader as naive and outdated, his poems of desperation retain the p o w e r of their modernity and the intensity of their suffering. " L o fatal," the t w o " N o c t u r n o s " from Cantos de vida y esperanza, and a third from El canto errante stand out for their emotional energy and for their poetic artistry. T h e three " N o c t u r n o s " share a single poetic climate and are united by a serious, almost tragic tone of self-examination. In the first D a r í o announces their central theme: the dual horror of consciousness and conscience. H e confronts the fleeting nature of existence, the halting but inexorable march t o w a r d "the unavoidable u n k n o w n , " and the disjuncture between the artistic and personal goals he has set for himself and w h a t he has actually achieved. T h e distant clavichord never yielded its sublime sonata to the poet's imagination, and he n o w fears that he must pay the cost of his search for beauty and pleasure. His only consolation is the belief that life is merely a nightmarish, fitful sleep from w h i c h he will be a w a k e n e d to see a truer reality. T h i s image is taken up in the second "Nocturno." If life is a fitful sleep, the nights of insomnia b e c o m e the moments of vision. It is during the dark, sleepless hours that D a r í o sees w i t h greatest clarity both the illusion of life and the omnipresence of death. H e joins in union w i t h all w h o , in their sleepless self-reflection, have developed an acute sensitivity to the w o r l d that surrounds them. T h e y are the ones w h o , in the mysterious silence of the night, w h e n the past escapes from the prison of oblivion and resurfaces as the voice of conscience, understand the full significance of his verse. By the fourth and penultimate quatrain, it becomes clear that D a r i o ' s greatest concern is that he may have failed to be w h a t he should have been and he has lost the k i n g d o m that should have been his. W h i l e the poet's unanimity with the beat of universal life suggests the promise of salvation through the assimilation of the divine order, it also reminds the poet of the responsibilities of his v o c a t i o n and, as is even more evident in " L o fatal," reinforces the imperatives of the doctrine of transmigration of souls. T h e resulting anguish is most 43


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intensely expressed in the fourth stanza. T h e alliteration of the p's emphasizes the echo of " p e s a r " [ " s o r r o w " or " r e g r e a t " but also the verb " t o w e i g h , " " t o be w e i g h t y " ] in " p e n s a r " ["to think"] and evokes the o v e r w h e l m i n g impact of the poet's loss ("perdida"), while the masculine rhyme of the second and fourth lines intensifies the poet's cry of remorse for his mistakes. W i t h its deliberately ambiguous ending, " N o c t u r n o n " captures D a r i o ' s see-sawing emotions, his sense of inadequacy and despondency as well as his hopes and pride. In " L o fatal," the last p o e m of Cantos de vida y esperanza, D a r i o juxtaposes the sense of failure to meet his spiritual responsibilities w i t h the apparent ignorance or insensitivity of the creatures on the l o w e r levels of existence. W h i l e he envies their immunity from the pangs of conscience, D a r i o dreads the thought that his soul may descend from the human to the animal in retribution for having sullied his elevated status w i t h "the flesh that tempts." T h i s allusion to the great chain of being serves as an underlying metaphor w h i c h enhances the p o e m ' s evocation of d o w n w a r d spiraling despair. By the end there is a total b r e a k d o w n of grammatical and stropic structures. T h e poet conveys the stranglehold of fear w i t h sentences and stanzas that remain unfinished, w i t h the purposeful elimi nation of the last line of w h a t w o u l d have been a sonnet. Like the reference to the " k i n g d o m that should have been h i s " of " N o c t u r n o II," the line " y el temor de haber sido y un futuro terror" ["and the fear of having been and a future terror"] reflects D a r i o ' s obsession w i t h the past and the future, especially w i t h the life that will be his after death. T h e horror of the future stems from the dual burden of conscious ness ("la vida consciente" ["conscious life"]) and conscience ("sufrir por la vida y por la s o m b r a " ["to suffer for life and for the s h a d o w s " ] ) . Unlike the tree and rock w i t h w h i c h the p o e m begins, the human is fully a w a r e of his responsibilities and h o w well he has met them. For the modernist poet w h o holds that his obligations include fulfilling the visionary destiny of an advanced being, the burden is even greater. In D a r i o ' s case, he often alludes to this situation, describing himself as being pulled between the animal and the divine, as being one w a y but wishing to be another. T h i s tension is central to D a r i o ' s entire poetic production and is represented as in the graphic art of the turn of the century - with extraordinary concision in the many composite creatures that populate his poetry. D a r i o ' s next b o o k of verse, El canto errante, incorporates poems from throughout his career, some from as far back as 1885 and 1886. Like the previous t w o collections, it begins w i t h an important prose introduction, " D i l u c i d a c i o n e s , " w h i c h reiterates the fundamental tenets of modernist art as D a r i o conceived them and points to perhaps the w o r k ' s most salient feature, namely, its diversity of themes, styles, and verse forms. D a r i o states: " T h e true artist understands all modes and manners and finds 44


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beauty in all forms. A l l glory and all eternity are in our conscious g r a s p . " In El canto errante there is a brilliantly executed eco ("Eco y y o " ) , an extensive and revealing epístola ("Epístola," w h i c h is dedicated to L e o p o l d o Lugones's wife), and a ten-part ode written in m e m o r y of Bartolomé M i t r e ( " O d a " ) . T h e r e are p o e m s about A m e r i c a ( " A C o l ó n , " " M o m o t o m b o , " " D e s d e la P a m p a , " " T u t e c o t z i m í " ) including one in praise of the United States ("Salutación al á g u i l a " ) , p o e m s that e v o k e the ancient Mediterranean ( " R e v e l a c i ó n , " " H o n d a s , " " E h e u ! " " L a canción de los p i n o s " ) , and others that portray the magical w o r l d s of art, fantasy, and self-indulgence ( " A F r a n c i a , " " V i s i ó n , " " L a hembra del p a v o real," " D a n z a elefantina," " L a bailarina de los pies d e s n u d o s , " " D r e a m , " " B a l d a en honor de las musas de carne y h u e s o , " " F l i r t " ) . T h e r e are poems about poets and poetry ( " A n t o n i o M a c h a d o , " " P r e l u d i o , " " C a m p o a m o r , " " S o n e t o " ) and p o e m s that offer reincarnation as an alternative to the o r t h o d o x v i e w of human destiny ("Eheu!" " H o n d a s , " " M e t e m p s i cosis"). A s in the first and title p o e m of the collection, the images c o m e from all corners of the globe, G r e e k and R o m a n m y t h o l o g y , the Bible, w o r l d literature, and modern life. Despite this syncretic vision and the many bases for consolation and optimism that it offers, D a r í o is unable to conquer completely the profound anguish and despair that became particularly acute w i t h the passage of time and the approach of death ("Sum," "Eheu!" "Nocturno," "Epístola"). In 1907 D a r í o w e n t h o m e to N i c a r a g u a , where he w a s accorded all the honors of a national hero and named N i c a r a g u a n A m b a s s a d o r to Spain, thereby achieving a steady if modest income. U p o n his return to M a d r i d , he w a s received again w i t h adulation and honors. F r o m then until 1 9 1 4 D a r í o spent most of his time in Spain and France, though he did take trips to M e x i c o , Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. In 1 9 1 0 he w a s asked to write a p o e m c o m m e m o r a t i n g the hundredth anniversary of Argentina's inde pendence. T h e resulting " C a n t o a la A r g e n t i n a " w a s published in La Nation on M a y 25 and later became the centerpiece of Canto a la Argentina y otros poemas. T h e commissioned w o r k turned out to be D a r i o ' s longest single p o e m , a masterpiece of civic poetry that reveals hidden links to other Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. Its vision is w i d e reaching and all-inclusive, m o v i n g freely from scenes from Greek myth ology to the wheatfield of the Pampas to the latest immigrants seeking solace and sustenance in their n e w homeland. W h i l e some sections are patriotic and grandiloquent, others are intimate and lyrical. Its overall exuberance, h o w e v e r , is conveyed by an abundance of images and detailed, elaborate description. A l l these elements, the tone, the images, and, to a certain extent, the themes recall O v i e d o ' s Historia general y natural de las Indias, Z e q u e i r a y A r a n g o ' s " A la p i n a , " Bello's " L a agricultura de la zona tórrida," Lugones's Odas seculares, as well as 45


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LITERATURE

sections of N e r u d a ' s Canto general w i t h its drive to rewrite history, to include the c o m m o n man, and to assert a n e w , Spanish A m e r i c a n o u t l o o k . T h i s o u t l o o k , while rooted in the past, takes shape and gains strength within the modernist movement. In 1 9 1 0 D a r í o also published Poema del otoño y otros poemas. T h i s short collection begins w i t h " P o e m a del o t o ñ o , " w h i c h continues the philosophic and reflective tone begun w i t h Cantos de vida y esperanza. O n c e again the rapid passage of time, the loss of y o u t h , and the proximity of death o v e r w h e l m D a r i o ' s v i e w p o i n t and encourage modern variations on the ancient theme of carpe diem, a theme repeated in the more lighthearted, closing p o e m , " E l clavicordio de la a b u e l a . " T h i s perspective is modified, h o w e v e r , by the consolation the poet finds in the harmony, beauty, and living unity of the c o s m o s . T h e beating heart of the universe, w h i c h appears intermittently throughout D a r i o ' s poetic production most often in the rhythmic echo of the ocean — becomes the central image of the p o e m ' s concluding six stanzas. It p u m p s the vital life fluid throughout all the creatures on the great chain of being, underscoring the erotic p o w e r at the core of universal harmony. T h i s fundamental oneness of life is extended to poetry and art in " V e s p e r a l , " w h e r e crabs leave illegible writings on the shore, and to w o m e n , w h o in " C a n c i ó n " become w o r k s of art of the sacred universal artist. O t h e r poems collected at this time were " R e t o r n o , " D a r i o ' s masterly reflections on his visit to N i c a r a gua, in w h i c h his homeland is perceived through a veil of art and philosophy, and less serious pieces such as " A M a r g a r i t a D e b a y l e " and " E n casa del D o c t o r Luis H . D e b a y l e . T o a s t . " T h e last collection D a r í o published, Canto a la Argentina y otros poemas, brought together " C a n t o a la A r g e n t i n a " and eleven other p o e m s , most of w h i c h were written between 1 9 1 1 and 1 9 1 4 . In " L a cartuja" D a r í o continues to hope for spiritual peace despite the unresolved conflicts within his being. A l l the visions of order and w i s d o m remain alien to him as he continues to feel himself pulled t o w a r d the bestial while aspiring t o w a r d the angelic. A s is clear from " L a cartuja," till the end of his life, D a r í o oscillated between the cognitively and artistically satisfying philosophies based on harmony, perfection, and analogy and those simple and direct beliefs about sin, guilt, and damnation that he learned in his youth. T h i s struggle appears in t w o excellent, uncollected poems written during the last months of his life, "Pasa y o l v i d a " and " D i v a g a c i o n e s . " T h e r e are nearly fifty uncollected p o e m s that are n o w regularly published as part of his complete poetic production. M a n y are equal in quality and interest to those that D a r í o collected for publication. D u r i n g these last years of his life, D a r í o continued to produce prose w o r k s as well. Letras, published in 1 9 1 1 , and Todo al vuelo, published in 1 9 1 2 , bring together articles written from 1906 to 1909. D a r í o also w r o t e 46 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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t w o revealing autobiographical w o r k s : La vida de Ruben Dario escrita por el mismo (1912) and Historia de mis libros (1913). In 1 9 1 4 , the First W o r l d W a r broke out and D a r i o had to leave Paris. Ailing and w i t h o u t means, he found shelter in G u a t e m a l a thanks to the hospitality of that country's dictator, M a n u e l Estrada C a b r e r a . In 1915 R o s a r i o , his legal wife, came for him and t o o k him back to N i c a r a g u a , where, in 1 9 1 6 , after t w o operations, he succumbed to years of self-inflicted abuse.

The late

Modernists

It is impossible to determine a specific m o m e n t at w h i c h M o d e r n i s m reached its plenitude. Generally the "second s t a g e " of the m o v e m e n t has encompassed the heterogeneous g r o u p of modernist poets w h o survived beyond 1896. S o m e w h e r e between that date and 1905 - during the period in w h i c h D a r i o m o v e d from Buenos Aires to M a d r i d - M o d e r n i s m developed a strong sense of itself and reached its widest diffusion. A number of talented poets continued, to a greater or lesser degree, the predominant modernist tendencies (Enrique G o n z a l e z M a r t i n e z [ M e x i c o , 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 5 2 ] , A m a d o N e r v o [ M e x i c o , 1 8 7 0 - 1 9 1 9 ] , R i c a r d o Jaimes Freyre [Bolivia, 1868-1933], G u i l l e r m o Valencia [ C o l o m b i a , 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 4 3 ] , Jose M a r i a Eguren [Peru, 1 8 7 4 - 1 9 4 2 ] , Jose Santos C h o c a n o [Peru, 1 8 7 5 1934], and Delmira Agustini [Uruguay, 1886-1914]). Still others drew upon the modernist impetus t o w a r d change and pushed further the expansion of the poetic repertoire in Spanish thereby, s o m e w h a t p a r a d o x ically, beginning the movement's unraveling as it began to anticipate the innovations of the Hispanic A v a n t - G a r d e . T h i s tendency is best observed in the w o r k s of L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s (Argentina, 1874-1938) and Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay, 1 8 7 5 - 1 9 1 0 ) .

Enrique G o n z a l e z M a r t i n e z If Herrera and L u g o n e s are n o w recognized as poets w h o contained within themselves the seeds that gave fruit during the creative explosion of la Vanguardia [the A v a n t - G a r d e ] , G o n z a l e z M a r t i n e z has long been linked with the poetic changes identified w i t h Postmodernism. Y e t the w o r k of no other poet s h o w s better that Postmodernism is not an independent movement but rather a continuation and natural develop ment of M o d e r n i s m , for G o n z a l e z M a r t i n e z became, despite his longevity and nineteen collections of verse over a forty-nine year period, a poet with one essential concern and one insistent style. In p o e m after p o e m G o n z a l e z M a r t i n e z explores the fundamental modernist desire to reveal the hidden order of the universe through the grace, beauty, and h a r m o n y of poetry. 47 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Early critics w h o saw in his w o r k a departure from M o d e r n i s m tended to view modernist verse as superficial, decorative, concerned only with the formal enhancement of Spanish poetry. M a n y were u n a w a r e (i) that M o d e r n i s m ' s recourse to swans, gardens, princesses, palaces, and Euro pean cultural models of all sorts reflected profound concerns regarding language, reality, and Spanish A m e r i c a ' s place in the modern w o r l d ; (2) that considerably before 1 9 1 1 , as early as the publication of " L a s ánforas de E p i c u r o " in the 1901 edition of Prosas profanas, M o d e r n i s m had already evolved t o w a r d a simpler, more introspective, and self-assured style, and (3) that the " s w a n s of deceitful p l u m a g e " that he criticizes did not belong to modernist poets but rather, as G o n z á l e z M a r t í n e z himself w o u l d m a k e clear, to the myriad, n o w long-forgotten hack imitators w h o echoed the language of M o d e r n i s m , its opulence, elegance, and ornamen tation, without comprehending the underlying issues that defined moder nist poetics. H e preferred the simpler and unadorned language reflective of his profound and unswerving faith in the p o w e r of poetry to establish an unimpeded link between the soul of the poet and the soul of the w o r l d , a faith grounded in the pantheism, occultism, and aesthetics of the symbolist poets that he k n e w well. (He had successfully translated into Spanish Baudelaire, Heredia, Verlaine, Maeterlinck, Jammes, and Rodenbach.) W h a t G o n z á l e z M a r t i n e z ' s poetry does, in short, is underscore the modernist foundation in analogy as well as its ideological distance from the irony, skepticism, and doubt of avant-garde poets. O r , as O c t a v i o Paz w o u l d state it, "he offers [Modernism] an awareness of itself and its hidden m e a n i n g " (cited in J. O . Jiménez, Antología crítica de la poesía modernista hispanoamericana, 280). T h i s meaning w a s doubly hidden, for M o d e r n i s m ' s profound significance w a s hidden from early readers w h o failed to realize that it sought to penetrate - through the musicality and evocative p o w e r of its verse - the eternal and harmonious order of existence that is hidden by the chaos of every-day reality. T h i s concern provides the b a c k g r o u n d to his most famous postmodernist p o e m , " T u é r c e l e el cuello al c i s n e . . . " (from Los senderos ocultos), in w h i c h the " p o s t m o d e r n i s t " o w l replaces the " m o d e r n i s t " s w a n . Whereas the s w a n ' s natural grace embodied for D a r í o and other Modernists the rhythm of the universe and the perfection of form, it came to be identified with h o l l o w echoes of modernist poetics and, therefore, w i t h obstacles encumbering the vision of harmony, with deceit, obfuscation, and the inability to "hear the soul of things and the voice of the landscape." W h i l e the o w l does not have the s w a n ' s beauty, it does have the ability to see into the dark and to interpret w h a t others cannot detect. Attention to formal beauty is thus replaced by an emphasis on clarity of perception and an intuitive understanding of the order of the c o s m o s . For G o n z á l e z M a r t í n e z , it is this 48 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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combined ability to perceive and understand that structures his poetry. H e seeks a profound beauty that exists in accord with nature - not a s h o w y , superficial distraction. Like the D a r í o of " L a s ánforas de E p i c u r o " and Cantos de vida y esperanza, he hopes that his poetry will reflect the rhythms of existence, the art of nature, and the harmonious soul of the universe. Y e t while D a r i o ' s poetry is energized by a tortured uncertainty, G o n z á l e z M a r t i nez's is characterized by a relentless optimism and a supreme confidence in the order of things. D a r í o confronts the gulf that exists between w h a t is desired and w h a t is real; he struggles to replace doubt and anguish with faith and solace; he suffers with the fear that he is not up to the challenge of his mission as poet. T h e s e tensions are almost completely absent from G o n z á l e z Martinez's w o r k and so the individual p o e m s become variations on a theme, masterful reworkings of one fundamental premise: Y que llegues, por fin, a la escondida playa con tu minúsculo universo, y que logres oír tu propio verso en que palpita el alma de la vida. [And may you arrive, at last, at the hidden beach with your minute universe, and may you succeed in hearing your own verse in which beats the soul of life.] ("Irás sobre la vida de las cosas. . ." from Silenter) Busca en todas las cosas el oculto sentido; lo hallarás cuando logres comprender su lenguaje; cuando sientas el alma colosal del paisaje y los ayes lanzados por el árbol herido. . . [Look for the hidden meaning in all things; you will find it when you succeed in understanding its language; when you sense the colossal soul of the countryside and the sighs hurled by the wounded tree. . .] ("Busca en todas las cosas" from Los senderos ocultos) Hará que los humanos en solemne perdón, unan las manos y el hermano conozca a sus hermanos; no cejará en su vuelo hasta lograr unir, en un consuelo inefable, la tierra con el cielo; hasta que el hombre, en celestial arrobo, hable a las aves y convenza al lobo. . . 49


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[It [the sacred wind] will make humans, in solemn forgiveness, unite their hands and brother recognize his brothers; it will not restrain its flight until it succeeds in uniting, in ineffable consolation, heaven and earth; until man, in celestial rapture, speaks to the birds and convinces the wolf. . .] ("Viento sagrado" from El libro de la fuerza, de la bondad y del ensueno) T h e exceptions to this replay of themes and symbols (the night, the lake, the w i n d , the hidden fountain, etc.) are his final w o r k s , El diluvio de fuego and Babel, w h i c h have p o e m s that deal w i t h the death of his wife and son, the poet Enrique G o n z a l e z R o j o , as well as w i t h gripping historical events. Y e t even in these later p o e m s that deal w i t h personal loss and the horrors of N a z i G e r m a n y , G o n z a l e z M a r t i n e z often counters despair with trust and faith. Amado Nervo M o r e like D a r i o and more in keeping w i t h modern sensibilities w h i c h are often defined by their uneasy - even unhappy - relationship w i t h dominant beliefs and values, A m a d o N e r v o has been characterized as a poet pulled between opposite poles, between a desire for material pleasures and an aspiration t o w a r d spiritual goals, between sensuality and religiosity, and between faith and doubt. His o v e r w h e l m i n g longing to see transcendence in w h a t appears limited and mutable, to reach beyond the immediate and the tangible, and to find a philosophic framework that w o u l d approve and endorse his erotic nature led him, like D a r i o and the French Symbolists before him, to explore a w i d e variety of u n o r t h o d o x belief systems including pantheism, mysticism, theosophy, spiritualism, Bergsonian Vitalism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. N e r v o found, in all these, effective responses to the dry intellectualization of Latin A m e r i c a n Positivism in w h i c h value derived exclusively from material things and industry w a s e n d o w e d w i t h glories and virtues. H e came to see the failure of positivistic thought in its inability to grasp the nature of anything other than the purely mechanical and static. C o n s e quently, he sought to immerse himself in the flow of existence and achieve a k n o w l e d g e of reality more profound than the fragmented and incom plete visions afforded by modern science and commerce. His La hermana agua (1901?) can be read as a statement on the primacy of "fluidity" in this alternate w a y of v i e w i n g the w o r l d as well as in modernist poetics in general, w h i c h held that to dictate form w o u l d be to inhibit w h a t the poet most hopes to achieve, namely, direct contact and accord between language and the universe. A t the same time that N e r v o explored untraditional w o r l d v i e w s , he 50 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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remained tied to his early religious training; his short-lived studies for the priesthood combined w i t h his philosophic curiosity to reinforce the syncretic tendencies prevalent a m o n g modernist writers. H e easily equates Christ w i t h other divinities - Jove, A l l a h , Brahma, A d o n a i - and aspires to a loss of self, of self-importance, and of desire that is reminiscent of both Christian asceticism and Buddhist spiritualism. It is the recognition of these fundamental tensions of N e r v o ' s w o r k that has generated renewed interest in, and a recent reassessment of, his w o r k . For a period of some forty years following his death, N e r v o ' s reputation declined and critics questioned the value of his poetic production, faulting his writing for its supposed vulgarity, superficiality, and lack of originality. W h i l e it may be true that in some of his later collections his poetry suffers from a facile application of various philosophic perspectives or from an artificial cultivation of a sense of intimacy, it is also true that N e r v o m o v e d from a mastery of modernist aesthetics, w i t h its aspiration to grace, elegance, and richness of texture, to a controlled, personal, and intimate poetry that anticipated and reinforced " p o s t m o d e r n i s t " developments. H e achieved these changes while addressing diverse issues of fundamental concern — from the political and social to the personal and philosophic - returning repeatedly to the themes of time, change, loss, love, and desire. A l l these c o m e together in his much quoted " V i e j a l l a v e " (En voz baja), a sensitive examination of the illusion of immutability and the p o w e r of evocation (poetic discourse) in a w o r l d of flux and impermanence. M o r e o v e r , w i t h p o e m s like " L a raza muerta," " L a raza de b r o n c e , " " C a n t o a M o r e l o s , " " L o s niños mártires," and " G u a d a l u p e la C h i n a c a " (from Lira heroica), N e r v o , as José Emilio Pacheco has noted (in his Antología del modernismo), anticipates the C h o c a n o of Alma América, the D a r í o of Canto a la Argentina, and the Lugones of Odas seculares, in attempting to strike a balance between cosmopolitanism and patriotic concerns, a balance that reflects a profound awareness of the movement's extraordinary place in Spanish A m e r i c a n history. T h i s awareness is evident as well throughout his extensive prose writings, in w h i c h he constantly refers to literary enterprises as a possible antidote to the prevalent stultification of the y o u n g and their unbridled regard for money. H e also defends modernist innovations in poetic form and language as a deliberate and enlightened response to the movement's immediate context. In this attention to national issues, in his nostalgic vision of provincial life, and in his eroticism tinged w i t h guilt, N e r v o lays the g r o u n d w o r k for later poets, most notably R a m ó n L ó p e z Velarde. N e r v o ' s w o r k divides into three periods. T h e first includes Místicas, Perlas negras, Poemas, La hermana agua, El éxodo y las flores del camino, and ends w i t h the political Lira heroica. In these collections N e r v o 5i



LITERATURE

confesses his personal obsession w i t h erotic passion and religious doubt. Stimulatingly u n o r t h o d o x ideas offered by esoteric thought appear in the consoling pantheism and universal accord of La Hermana agua and in the powerful occultist figure of the cosmic androgyne in " A n d r ó g i n o " (Poemas). Los jardines interiores and En voz baja m a k e up the second stage in w h i c h , as M e r l i n Forster notes in Historia de la poesía hispanoamericana, N e r v o ' s poetry becomes more serene as he seeks a place for himself in the material - and materialistic - w o r l d in w h i c h he lives. In " M i v e r s o , " the second p o e m from Los jardines interiores and a poetic statement of N e r v o ' s artistic goals, he wrote: Querría que mi verso, de guijarro, en gema se trocase y en joyero; que fuera entre mis manos como el barro en la mano genial del alfarero. [I would wish that my poetry, made of stone, be changed to gem and jewel, that it would be in my hands like the clay in the ingenious hand of the potter.] T h e g o a l is to create objects of transcendent beauty and w o r t h from the mundane and prosaic, objects that, as he suggests in the second stanza, w o u l d enhance individual lives as well as have spiritual significance. Y e t if N e r v o wants to " m i n t " stanzas and turn verses into g o l d , it is also in order to be able to m o v e from w h a t he called the "aristocracia en h a r a p o s " ["aristocracy in rags"] to the aristocracy of money and p o w e r from w h i c h he felt excluded but to w h i c h he felt — by privilege of merit - he belonged. T h e poet's aspirations to wealth - even if only verbal - is exemplary of his conflictive attitudes t o w a r d the dominant values of the day and the materialistic society that fostered them. T h e third period w a s colored by the death of his beloved wife, A n a Cecelia Luisa Daillez, in 1 9 1 2 , and by a search for consolation that never fully relieved his unremitting grief. T h e most tortured p o e m s appear in La amada inmóvil: versos a una muerta, most of w h i c h were written in the very year of her death but w h i c h were not published until 1920. T h e later collections, Serenidad, Elevation, Plenitud, El estanque de los lotos, and El arquero divino, explore the possibilities for solace and transcendence offered by both Christian and oriental philosophies.

Ricardo

]aimes

Freyre

Despite his very limited poetic production Jaimes Freyre continues to be read and remembered today for three important reasons: (1) his active 52. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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collaboration in Buenos Aires w i t h D a r i o , w i t h w h o m he founded in 1894 the short-lived but influential Revista de América, (2) his innovative adaptation and enthusiastic defense of free verse, and (3) his syncretic recourse to medieval and N o r d i c myths and legends to express concerns regarding the general artistic and sociopolitical context in w h i c h he wrote. Jaimes Freyre's practice of free verse developed within the literary circle headed by D a r í o and Lugones between 1893 and 1898, w o r k i n g , as he stated, a little by intuition and a little under the influence of French, Italian, and Portuguese writers. His first collection of p o e m s , Castalia bárbara, w a s published in Buenos Aires in 1899 and contains six of the earliest examples of free verse in Spanish poetry. T h e y divide into t w o types, one based on the silva and the other on prosodic groupings. His second and only other collection of poetry, L o s sueños son vida, also contains three poems of these t w o types along w i t h " A l m a helénica," a c o m p l e x , polymetric p o e m . Between the publication of these t w o b o o k s , he published Leyes de versificación castellana in 1 9 1 2 , in w h i c h he spelled out his basic assumptions and beliefs. H e held that only accent has the ability to generate rhythm and that Spanish verse forms are created by combining "períodos p r o s ó d i c o s " ["prosodic g r o u p i n g s " ] . T h i s concept a l l o w s him to distinguish between prose and poetry since the latter is characterized by a combination of equal or analogous groupings. His emphasis upon accentual rhythm instead of upon the mechanical counting of syllables provided theoretical support for the type of free verse that he had already begun to write and resuscitates, as noted by Henríquez Ureña (Breve historia del modernismo), the irregular versification of old Spanish verse. A t the same time, h o w e v e r , this v i e w of poetry considerably restricted the definition of free verse itself, limiting it, within Jaimes Freyre's scheme, to an arbitrary mixture of different prosodic groupings or a combination of phrases w i t h o u t any rhythm at all. Nevertheless he claims for himself the honor of having been the first to introduce free verse in Spanish. H e gives 1894 the date of one of his early pieces, thereby m a k i n g it contemporaneous with Suva's " N o c t u r n o , " w h i c h in 1894 expanded Spanish metrics through the free accumulation of clauses. Related to Jaimes Freyre's attention to the possibilities of versification and the innovation of poetic form is his recourse to medieval and N o r d i c myths and legends. T h r o u g h both, he struggles to achieve a poetic vision that is in touch w i t h the primordial rhythms of existence and the visions of a simpler time and place. Like W a g n e r , w h o s e incursions into his preChristian W a l h a l l a reflected changing political concerns and a search for redemption from the crass and sterile realities of nineteenth-century G e r m a n y , Jaimes Freyre, w i t h his G e r m a n i c g o d s , heroes, and genies, a s

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attempted to respond to his immediate milieu by capturing a w o r l d alive w i t h spirits, vibrant w i t h song, and saturated w i t h the lifeblood of existence. W h i l e the title of his first collection recalls Leconte de Lisle's Poèmes barbares (1854) and underscores a source of inspiration other than the castalia clasica of traditional Spanish poetry, the freedom of the verse and the energy of the subject suggest a desire to tap a primitive - not Parnassian - p o w e r and a desire to evoke w i t h symbolist magic and musicality an uncorrupted energy that underlies all life and action. A l s o like W a g n e r , w h o achieved a sense of salvation only with the writing of Parsifal and a return to Christian themes and imagery, Jaimes Freyre relies on a syncretic blending of p a g a n and Christian symbols and motifs throughout his poetry. Perhaps the best-known example is " A e t e r n u m v a l e , " in w h i c h the end of one world-order, that envisioned in G e r m a n i c m y t h o l o g y , ushers in another based on " e l D i o s silencioso que tiene los brazos abiertos" ["the silent G o d w h o s e arms are open"] in a redemptive embrace. His second collection of poetry published eighteen years after the first is less G e r m a n i c and more universal, developing both the philosophical and political aspects implicit in many of the poems of the earlier collection. " R u s i a , " written in 1906, demonstrates a keen political awareness and a profound sympathy for the masses. Politics, h o w e v e r , w a s not an occasional intellectual exercise for Jaimes Freyre. O n c e back in Bolivia, after having taught for many years in T u c u m a n , Argentina, he assumed several high administrative posts and even considered running for office.

Guillermo

Valencia

Even more than for Jaimes Freyre, politics w a s a central activity in the life of G u i l l e r m o V a l e n c i a . H e served in the C o l o m b i a n Congress, in high administrative positions, and in the diplomatic corps. H e w a s also twice named the Conservative Party candidate for president - though he w a s never elected. Despite his public service, he maintained an active literary career, a large part of w h i c h revolved around translation. His sense of g o o d taste, his solid humanist education, and his k n o w l e d g e of several classic and modern languages are evident throughout his sensitive and skilled translations, the earliest of w h i c h were of his European contemporaries and immediate predecessors - Keats, H u g o , Flaubert, Heine, Baudelaire, Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Verlaine, D ' A n n n u n z i o , Stefan G e o r g e , H u g o van Hofmannstal, and O s c a r W i l d e - as well as of the Indian writer and philosopher Sir Rabindranath T a g o r e . Later, in his Catay, he presented idiosyncratic versions of w o r k s by Chinese poets such as L i - T a i - P o , T u - F u , and W a n g Hei based on the French prose transla54


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tions by Franz Toussaint. T h e minimalist nature of these oriental pieces reinforced the poetic trends developing throughout Spanish A m e r i c a at the time. D u r i n g the same period, José Juan T a b l a d a ( M e x i c o , 1 8 7 1 1945), w h o is generally classified as a postmodernist poet, w a s introducing the elegant simplicity of the Japanese hai-ku to Spanish. Valencia's o w n poetry consists of one b o o k of verse, Ritos, w h i c h w a s originally published in 1899 and w h i c h reappeared in an expanded version in 1914. His w o r k is dominated by a seriousness and a symbolic density, by a linguistic sophistication, terseness, and polish that have been characterized both as classical and as Parnassian. H o w e v e r , his w o r k defies easy classification, demonstrating in addition a sensual and s y m b o l ist attention to the tone and texture of verse. R o b e r t J. G l i c k m a n emphasizes V a l e n c i a ' s desire to celebrate "literary rites" that set out to counter the negative forces that impede the spiritual elevation of the individual and society. T h i s effort - encased within a poetry of verbal splendour, encyclopedic breadth, and punctilious precision - links V a l e n cia with other Modernists.

José María

Eguren

Equally difficult to classify is the w o r k of José M a r i a Eguren. H e published his first poems in the magazines of L i m a around 1899 and his first b o o k , Simbólicas, in 1 9 1 1 ; with it he began a poetic career that w a s generally misunderstood and much maligned. His w o r k contradicted the emphatic and declamatory poetry popular at the time, a poetry epito mized by the w o r k of Peru's soon-to-be poet laureate José Santos C h o c a n o . H e remained throughout his career, w i t h the later publication of La canción de las figuras and Poesías: Simbólicas, La canción de las figuras, Sombra, Rodinelas, a little-known, marginal poet w h o s e sup porters — such illustrious Peruvians as A b r a h a m V a l d e l o m a r , M a n u e l G o n z á l e z Prada, José C a r l o s M a r i á t e g u i , and César Vallejo - praised his radical independence, his originality, and his unique and solitary nature despite widespread public and critical antipathy and misapprehension. If Eguren w a s criticized during his life-time for being difficult, obscure, and " h e r m e t i c , " he is n o w esteemed as the supreme representative of Symbolism in Peru and even as a forerunner of the A v a n t - G a r d e . His w o r k - w i t h its references to the night, to the tenuous and frightening realm of childhood memories, and to the w o r l d of nature turned unreal - reveals the poet's sense of mystery and a w e regarding the order of things. F r o m his first texts on, Eguren's poetic imagination provides a type of spiritual idealism offered as an alternative to personal tragedies and social ills. N a t u r e is often viewed w i t h a w o n d e r m e n t that borders on the religious, 55


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and this vision is generally presented w i t h the language of the fantastic and a musicality derivative of modernist innovations but more personal and idiosyncratic. T h o u g h Eguren's w o r k w a s deemed marginal to M o d e r n i s m because of its symbolist tendencies, its lack of epic breadth and tropical lushness, and the absence of Versaillesque gardens and swans, it manifests key features that reaffirm its placement a m o n g that of other modernist writers. A s Rodríguez-Peralta has noted (in " T h e M o d e r n i s m of José M a r í a E g u r e n " ) , his poetry is filled w i t h exoticism, oriental fantasies, and references to both classical and N o r d i c mythologies; his vocabulary includes neologisms, French, and Italianate forms; and there are examples of the frivolous, elegant, and aristocratic details that for many defined much of early M o d e r n i s m . Y e t these standard elements did not obscure his creativity w h i c h shocked and alienated his early readers. T o d a y his neologisms and his scenes of childhood innocence turned menacing d o not only recall the fanciful inventions of M o d e r n i s m and its search for the paradise lost to modern man but also the fearful visions of the A v a n t G a r d e , most notably the poetry of his fellow Peruvian César Vallejo. T h u s Eguren's w o r k can n o w be understood to contain a creative m i x of elements from M o d e r n i s m , Postmodernism, and the early A v a n t - G a r d e , a mix that underscores the interdependence a m o n g , rather than the rup tures between, these movements.

Leopoldo

Lugones

A n even more extreme and varied mix is central to the poetry of L e o p o l d o Lugones; for this reason it has virtually become a truism of modernist criticism to say that his w o r k is the product of many Lugoneses. T h o u g h the diverse nature of Lugones's poetic production has long been recog nized, only recently - with studies such as those by Saul Y u r k i e v i c h (Celebración) and G w e n Kirkpatrick (The Dissonant Legacy) - has the significance of this shifting pattern of imitation and innovation begun to be appreciated. T h e contradictions and asymmetries within Lugones's poetry are indications of fissures within modernist poetics that result from an evolving artistic and socio-political context and eventually lead to a distancing from and even a disenchantment w i t h literary models — a disenchantment that anticipates the poetic transformations of the A v a n t G a r d e . In other w o r d s , the philosophic, emotional, and hierarchical dislocations produced by the continuing changes within the ideological and social structures of modern Argentina provide the b a c k d r o p to Lugones's many poetic and political voices. T h i s feature of Lugones's w o r k , w h i c h on occasion has been read as a type of superficiality or artistic fickleness, hides a profound, almost tragic, 56


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realization that coincides with w h a t Paz in Los hijos del limo specifies as a characteristic central to the transition from M o d e r n i s m to the A v a n t G a r d e , a characteristic that occurs at that m o m e n t w h e n the correspondence of analogy is broken and dissonance takes over. Paz identifies this dissonance w i t h irony in poetry and with mortality in life. Borges, in his famous study, Leopoldo Lugones, emphasizes this moment w h e n he describes the poet as a man w h o : controlled his passions and industriously built tall and illustrious verbal edifices until the cold and the loneliness got to him. Then, that man, master of all the words and all the splendor of the word, felt within his being that reality is not verbal and may be incommunicable and terrible, and went, silently and alone, to look, in the twilight of an island, for death. Borges refers here both to the poet's suicide and to the loss of faith in the decipherability of the universe, a loss that defines an essential change in modernist poetry. Even though Modernists had rejected a rigid sense of referentiality and had turned a w a y from " r e a l i s m , " for the most part, they continued to idealize poetry as a striving t o w a r d beauty and transcendence. T h e cult of the exotic, the emphasis on sonority, the enrichment of poetic form, and the delight in verbal play remained tied to a romantic faith in the poet's ability to intuite the profound and transcendent. Y e t the natural development of modernist tendencies led to a linguistic c r o w d i n g , an overloading of sensory devices, and a certain formal - and even conceptual - instability that gave w a y to new poetic possibilities. In this regard the innovations introduced by L u g o n e s and Herrera y Reissig, namely, the breaks in syntax, the eruption of the unintelligible, the irony and self-parody, prefigure the w o r k s of later, avant-garde poets and their progressive disenchantment with the p o w e r of poetry to fill the spiritual void of modern society. A l m o s t paradoxically, in spite or because of these fundamental shifts and the cataclysmic dislocations they generate, Lugones rather quickly came to turn his back on innovation and the u n k n o w n and chose to affirm the great traditions of rhyme and patriotism. Starting as early as 1910 w i t h Odas seculares Lugones's experimentation recedes and conservative values and visions c o m e to the fore. Until then, in his first three collections, Las montañas del oro, Los crepúsculos del jardín, and Lunario sentimental, the impetus is t o w a r d the deliberately new. T h e modernist delight in presenting the unexpected and u n o r t h o d o x , the iconoclastic playfulness evident, for e x a m p l e , in the title and poems of D a r í o ' s Prosas profanas, appear throughout Las montañas del oro. N e x t to prose pieces there are poems in w h i c h the verses run on separated only 57



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by hyphens, and L u g o n e s purposely replaced the y w i t h /, an orthographic change that later editions do not a l w a y s respect. M o r e importantly, h o w e v e r , he successfully incorporated into this w o r k the prophetic splendor of H u g o , the resonant serenity of W h i t m a n , the visionary intensity of Dante, and the fundamental p o w e r of H o m e r , swelling the dimensions and enriching the tonalities of the p o e m s . It is with these poets that he aligns himself in the first p o e m of the collection, w h i c h is simply called " I n t r o d u c c i ó n . " In it L u g o n e s presents his poetic p r o g r a m , w h i c h for the most part coincides with the premises of the modernist verse being written at the time. M o s t significant are those that underscore the special relationship between the poet and G o d . T h e poet hears the voice of G o d in nature and creates a spiritual force in his verse that moves the earth and lights the darkness of despair and ignorance. T h e revitalizing force presented encompasses - by the final pieces of the third cycle - a dizzying array of scientists, theosophists, philosophers, economists, and artists. T h i s syncretic blending of the ancient occult and modern physical sciences together with the arts and philosophy is offered in a frenzied embrace of progress similar to the Futurism proposed by Marinetti twelve years later, but humanized and spiritualized by a faith in a divine and harmonious order. T h e overall impression, h o w e v e r , remains consonant with D a r i o ' s early assessment of Lugones's poetic assimilation as " a rapid collision of g l a n c e s . " T h e sense of excessive accumulation, artificial overloading, purposeful distortion of forms, and, occasionally, transgressive defiance will continue in different guises and to different degrees in the next t w o collections. T h e publication of Los crepúsculos del jardín in 1905 builds upon M o d e r n i s m ' s foundations in Symbolism and the latter's emphasis upon correspondences between the visible and transcendent realms of existence. T h e visual is the strongest element in this collection in w h i c h the presentation of garden scenes, the patterns of fading light, and erotic encounters e v o k e other dimensions of reality - many of w h i c h are menacing and disquieting. It is this feature w h i c h links L u g o n e s w i t h Albert Samain (1858-1900), w h o s e Au jardín de Vinfante (1893) * considered to have been a direct influence on both L o s crepúsculos del jardín and on Herrera y Reissig's L o s éxtasis de la montaña (1904), a confluence of inspiration w h i c h led to an unfounded accusation of plagiarism against Lugones in 1 9 1 2 . A l o n g w i t h Samain, the influence of Verlaine and D a r í o is evident, but most striking is Lugones's reluctance to maintain the sense of mystery and musicality that defines the symbolist substructure of his w o r k . H e often interrupts the m o o d created w i t h an unexpected term, incongruous image, or transgressive allusion. T h e effect can be parodie, c o m i c , decadent, or - as in " E l solterón" and " E m o c i ó n a l d e a n a " - a strange cross between irony, nostalgia, and restraint. T h i s s

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last tendency reappears in the pastoral w o r k s of Herrera y Reissig and R a m ó n L ó p e z Velarde. T h e most disturbingly m o v i n g poems are the twelve sonnets that m a k e up " L o s doce g o z o s . " T h e repeated references to G o d , violence, parts of the b o d y , and death suggest a mysterious, almost demonic rite that simultaneously plays with the possibility of, and deflects attention from, transcendent significance. In either case, the untamed passions are a haunting commentary on, or critique of, the stable, traditional, and unquestioning nature of bourgeois society, an intriguing and unnerving m i x of revolution and revelation characteristic of modern poetry. It is the revolutionary aspect of his verse that comes to the fore in his next collection, Lunario sentimental, written under the influence of Jules Laforgue (i860-1887), his Limitation de Notre Dame la Lune, and his acerbic m o c k e r y of archetypal patterns. In this w o r k Lugones combines prose and poetry, breaks w i t h the affectations of poetic language, introduces colloquial discourse, builds daring metaphors, incorporates unusual adjectivization, dissolves organizing f r a m e w o r k s , and relies upon rhetorical games that underscore his attack upon traditional views of poetic beauty. H e supports in his " P r ó l o g o " the freedom provided by free verse at the same time that he insists upon rhyme as the "essential element of modern verse." H o w e v e r , the rhymes that appear are often disturbingly unexpected, as are the images. W h i l e the v o l u m e is unified by the theme of the m o o n , this sacred c o w of poetic discourse, along with others, is trivialized, caricaturized, and parodied to the point that, as Borges pointed out, the verbal structure becomes the focus of attention much more than the scene or emotions described. T h e s e formal changes and, most especially, the freeing of poetic signs from previous constraints, reflect L u g o n e s ' s changing attitude t o w a r d the role of the poet, one that in its o w n w a y pushes M o d e r n i s m further t o w a r d the A v a n t - G a r d e . A s Kirkpatrick has noted, in Las montañas del oro the figure of the poet, either as prophetic leader of humanity or as a satanic visionary, w a s an interpreter of universal meaning. In L o s crepúsculos del jardín he became an organizing voice rearranging the chaotic welter of elements of the perceptible realm of existence. In Lunario sentimental he turns these roles on their head and underscores his awareness of the inherent falseness of all things. T h i s emotional and conceptual distance from traditional objects of esteem encourages artifice, caricature, c o m e d y , and a disconcerting mix of perspective, tone, and language all of w h i c h is offered as a defiant response to a w o r l d of appearances. In w h a t appears as a balancing or stabilizing alternative to the potentially destructive consequences of these insights and innovations, Lugones in his " P r ó l o g o " to Lunario sentimental offers a practical and 59


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patriotic defense of poetry. H e proposes to demonstrate "the utility of poetry in the enhancement of l a n g u a g e s . " O n e of its great advantages is its concision: " B e i n g concise and clear, it tends to be definite, adding to the language a n e w proverbial expression or set phrase that saves time and effort." Lugones sees this p o w e r of poetic language as a national asset, one that must be cultivated and cared for. " L a n g u a g e is a social resource, perhaps the most consistent element of national manners and c u s t o m s . " T h o u g h for the reader it is easy to lose sight of this fundamental link between the formation of nation states and the creation of a modern mode of discourse appropriate to them - especially in the verbal artifice and fireworks of collections like Las montañas del oro, Los crepúsculos del jardín, and Lunario sentimental - Lugones never does. In reality, it is present throughout his poetry, in the insertion of shockingly prosaic vocabulary such as " c o l d c r e a m , " " a l k a l i n e , " " h y d r a u l i c , " and "sportsw o m a n , " and in c a c o p h o n o u s rhymes such as "flacucha/trucha," "diec i o c h o / b i z c o c h o , " " b o t e l l a / d o n c e l l a , " "fotográfico/seráfico." T h e s e elements e m b o d y the struggle for a language of national identity, one that asserts individuality in the face of traditionalism as well as international trends and pressures. It is this search for a language of national identity that becomes the focus of Lugones's next major w o r k , Odas seculares, published in 1910 as part of the centennial celebration of Argentina's independence. T h e collection is divided into four parts: the first consists of a single p o e m " A la Patria," the second is entitled " L a s cosas útiles y magníficas," the third focuses on " L a s c i u d a d e s , " and the fourth deals with " L o s h o m b r e s , " including the most typical of all Argentinians, the g a u c h o . W i t h these p o e m s Lugones confronts history, geography, and national spirit. W i t h them he begins his journey to a simpler, more direct style, one in w h i c h his concerns, desires, and reflections achieve a clarity and sincerity that had previously been lost behind embellishment, artifice, and linguistic splendor, a style that reflects another general trend not to the A v a n t - G a r d e but to postmodernist poetry. W h i l e his next three volumes of verse, El libro fiel, El libro de los paisajes, and Las horas doradas, seem to respond to the same impetus t o w a r d traditional poetic form, intimacy, and simplicity, the first is the most strongly confessional, embracing at the same time the delights and despairs of passionate love. T h e second and third focus more on the exterior w o r l d , both landscapes and miniatures. T h o u g h less dramatic and certainly less studied than his earlier, more flamboyant, inventive, " m o d e r n i s t " collections, these contain some strikingly beautiful poems that demonstrate Lugones's poetic versatility and skill. H e changes key but continues to dazzle in a new, more intimate w a y . His final three collections, Romancero, Poemas solariegos, and Romances del Río Seco published posthumously in 1938, continue the 60 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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dual trajectory t o w a r d intimacy and national identity. Romancero bears the influence of Heine in its title, its thirteen lieder, its opening p o e m , " G a y a ciencia," and in its overall quietly intense tone. Poemas solariegos and Romances del Rio Seco find the essence of Argentina in the simple elements of life w h i c h are captured either in rich, detailed description or minimalist minipoems. T h e s e w o r k s are a step back from the verbal fireworks of the first three collections, w h i c h contain techniques and perspectives that break ground for the poets of the A v a n t - G a r d e . T h e verse that filled the last twenty-eight years of his life offers a reassertion of the fundamental faith in poetry to e v o k e significant realities, the defining characteristic that makes postmodernist poetry a continuation of Modernism.

Julio Herrera

y

Reissig

If w h a t defines the link between M o d e r n i s m and Postmodernism is their shared poetic vision based on universal analogy, a metaphoric system in w h i c h the sensorial reveals the spiritual, the early w o r k s by Lugones and much of Herrera's poetic production can be seen as an alternate develop ment of modernist tendencies, one that serves as a short-cut to the avantgarde experimentation w i t h poetry as a verbal construct - one tragically or ironically locked within its o w n structures no longer directed t o w a r d a transcendent vision or tied to the imitation of literary models or nature. T h e early modernist desire to create a poetry based on "the p o e t i c " finds a fertile development in the verbal options opened by these t w o authors, w h o build upon w h a t the earlier poets had made possible in Spanish recourse to verbal correspondences and synesthesia fundamental to the Symbolists, the incorporation of v o c a b u l a r y and images from high culture and exotic landscapes. Y e t they push these elements out of proportion. W h a t comes to predominate is parody, tension, and rupture, a sense of being off balance that is identified w i t h avant-garde poetics. W h i l e D a r i o struggles - through analogy - to reveal the divine intelligence that imbues the universe w i t h order, Herrera expands the verbal possibilities so that the metaphoric connection between things is less direct and more elusive, more surprising, arbitrary, imaginary, ironic, and critical. His most innovative metaphors are not based on external connections but appear as projections of his o w n - not a l w a y s stable psychic state (hence the repeated allusions to esplin, jaquecas, neurosis, neurastenias, and lo espectral). T h e result is violent, shocking, and often deliberately unaesthetic. Whether this poetic vision stems from a tragic awareness, starting at age five, of a congenital heart lesion that w o u l d d o o m him to a short life, or from a rebellious, anarchistic, anti-bourgeois dandyism that w o u l d keep him on the margins of society (looking out at 61 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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the w o r l d from within his Cenáculo [guest chamber], later called the Torre de los Panoramas), or from an eclectic and critical nature that wished to push M o n t e v i d e o beyond its provincial and unimaginative conservatism, Herrera puts modernist tendencies under a magnifying glass, perfecting, exaggerating, and distorting w h a t he passionately embraced. It is difficult to trace a clear chronological trajectory of Herrera's poetic development because of the w a y he chose to publish his w o r k . H e organized only one collection of p o e m s , Los peregrinos de piedra, w h i c h appeared posthumously in the year of his death. It is an anthological compilation of his entire opus. F r o m it he excluded pieces that are as important and well executed as those he included. For example, he left out a third of the p o e m s from Los éxtasis de la montaña and more than half of those from Los parques abandonados. A s much as possible, scholars have attempted to date individual p o e m s and group them within their original collections, but the dating is often imprecise because Herrera is said to have w o r k e d on a number of collections at the same time and to have revised them over time. W h a t can be safely stated, h o w e v e r , is that most of his poetry belongs to the ten-year period between 1900 and 1910. His early poems belong to the first third of this decade, and those written before 1900 are generally considered his w e a k e r , less original pieces. A s might be expected, the poems from 1900, especially those from Las pascuas del tiempo, most strongly reflect the influence of other modernist poets, particularly that of D a r i o , L u g o n e s , and C a s a l , w h o s e decadent dandyism finds parallels in Herrera's life-long attraction to images of disease and psychoses. T h e s e p o e m s reveal the same preoccupation w i t h elegance, opulence, and European culture that molded much of early M o d e r n i s m . T h e famous "Fiesta popular de u l t r a t u m b a " recalls Prosas profanas, especially its first three p o e m s w i t h their wide-ranging e x p l o ration of styles and modes of discourse. T h o u g h many of Herrera's pieces present a cultural smorgasbord similar to D a r i o ' s " D i v a g a c i ó n , " the U r u g u a y a n ' s unique perspective is already present in the more than occasional ironic remarks that underscore his critical distance from the generally solemn deference given to imported high culture. T h e next major collection, Los parques abandonados, consists of poems written between 1900 and 1908. T w e n t y - t w o were published in Los peregrinos de piedra as eufocordias; fifty-seven were left out. A s Allen Phillips has noted ( " C u a t r o poetas hispanoamericanos"), Herrera s h o w s a cosmic complicity in these gentle and touching love sonnets. In " L a sombra d o l o r o s a , " for e x a m p l e , nature shares w i t h the poet the pain of separation, affirming a transcendental unity interrupted by a loss that is linked, by the blaring train, to modern life and unresponsive technology. In " E l abrazo p i t a g ó r i c o , " the universal and eternal harmony alluded to in 6z


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the title is found in the unity of the t w o lovers, their love, their song, and their pleasure - not w i t h o u t , h o w e v e r , the characteristic Herrerian touches of absurdity in the form of intrusive scientific terms and colloquial phrases. T h e poems of Los éxtasis de la montaña, called eglogánimas in Los peregrinos de piedra, date from 1904 to 1910. T h e s e alexandrine sonnets are pastoral in nature, eclogues full of peace and tranquility. T h e y are, at the same time, a m o n g his most original w o r k s , containing "pre-creacionista" images and metaphors. T h e poems reveal a joy in the innocent and ingenuous nature of rural life and an intense pantheism in w h i c h the cosmic order is repeated in the apparently insignificant details of everyday existence. T h e landscape, h o w e v e r , takes on an unreal quality, transmuted into verbal constructs through deliberately archaic references and a baroque sensibility (the influence of G ó n g o r a ) that helped prepare the transition from M o d e r n i s m to the A v a n t - G a r d e . T h e fantasy atmosphere is often interrupted by the absurdity of life or by a shocking image, both o f w h i c h d r a w attention to and, as a result, m o c k the p o e m ' s literary pretenses. " L a iglesia" ends with a flood of chickens, " E l c u r a " concludes with the priest's piety described as licking like a c o w , and " D o m i n u s v o b i s c u m " breaks the timelessness of the countryside w i t h the appearance of a " z o o t é c n i c o , " a professor of w o r m s . Within this same pastoral tendency fall " C i l e s a l u c i n a d a " (1902) and " L a muerte del p a s t o r " (1907), t w o narrative poems of great beauty. Often contrasted with these poems of rural life is another poetic trend that emerges during Herrera's ten years of creativity, one that is more specifically metaphysical in orientation. Y e t both tendencies reflect in varying degrees and with varying intensity the same concern with the fragility of life and the absurdity of existence, from w h i c h one can only be partially sheltered by community, tradition, or literary imagination. T h i s recognition seems to form the b a c k d r o p to Herrera's remarkably " m o d e r n " poetry, w o r k s that, in their surrender to the dark and troubling aspects of reality, break logical connections and become deliberately difficult, obtuse, and chaotic. T h e type of angst that appears in D a r i o ' s three " N o c t u r n o s , " for e x a m p l e , is even more disorienting and potentially destructive in Herrera's " D e s o l a c i ó n absurda," written in 1903. Life is defined by death, w h i c h tears the soul of the poet apart ("amo y soy un m o r i b u n d o / tengo el alma hecha p e d a z o s " ["I love and I am a dying man / my soul is torn to pieces"]); unity and salvation become impossible; the best that love can offer is a "parenthesis"; and nature only pretends to be a reflection of G o d . La torre de las esfinges, written in 1909 and accurately if self-mockingly subtitled " p s i c o l o g a c i ó n morbo-panteista," is itself a bridge from the playfully optimistic, esoteric syncreticism of M o d e r n i s m to the morbid, nightmarish visions of the A v a n t - G a r d e . In a different w a y 63



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the same is true of another g r o u p of poems from 1909, Las clepsidras, w h i c h are more than " c r o m o s e x ó t i c o s " ["exotic color prints"], as Herrera calls them. T h e formal perfection of these sonnets, their rich descriptive quality, and their archaeological fascination w i t h the unusual and u n o r t h o d o x reveal their grounding in the traditions of M o d e r n i s m . A t the same time, h o w e v e r , they contain elements that will later define the w o r k s of the A v a n t - G a r d e : shockingly erotic references, illogical and disturbingly evocative images, and language that is disconcertingly innovative. T h o u g h Herrera y Reissig remained a Modernist, in love w i t h demanding poetic structures (the sonnet and the décima), fond of rich and exotic landscapes and tonalities, and a disciple of the symbolist faith in evocation and suggestion, there can be little w o n d e r that he has been recognized by many modern writers - César Vallejo, Vicente H u i d o b r o , Pablo N e r u d a , Federico G a r c í a L o r c a , and Vicente A l e i x a n d r e , to men tion only the most prominent - as a kindred spirit and teacher.

José Santos

Chocano

T h o u g h José Santos C h o c a n o w a s one of the youngest Modernists, his poetry did not anticipate the future but rather l o o k e d back t o w a r d the past. It appeared on the scene as an exuberant affirmation of the painterly, elaborate, image-laden M o d e r n i s m that had for the most part begun to recede in favor of a more introverted and intimate style. Perhaps because of this very fact - together w i t h his enthusiastic p r o - A m e r i c a n Mundonovismo - his poetry pleased a wide audience accustomed to modernist fare, and he became one of the most popular poets of the time. It is impossible to determine the factor that had the greatest impact upon his w o r k . H e w a s driven by the idea of becoming "the poet of A m e r i c a " and unselfconsciously called up real and imagined images of South A m e r i c a in order to achieve this title - one that had been foreclosed to D a r í o by José Enrique R o d ó ' s early assessment of his w o r k . South A m e r i c a n geography, history, legend, landscapes, peoples, flowers, and animals are painted in broad and vibrant brushstrokes, for his natural inclination t o w a r d grandiloquence, linguistic inflation, and rhetorical expansiveness found a perfect outlet in his purposeful exaltation of A m e r i c a n enterprises and w o n d e r s . C h o c a n o w o u l d recite - w i t h great personal and economic success - these activities and marvels to audiences in M a d r i d , the C a r i b b e a n , Central and South A m e r i c a , and the oratorical nature of these recitals further encouraged his established stylistic tenden cies. T h a n k s to his fame, popularity, and the pose he assumed as he executed his poetic goals, he w a s c r o w n e d national poet of Peru in 1922, though he hardly ever lived there. 64


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Since the end of M o d e r n i s m , the bombast, hyperbole, excess, and lack of nuance of his w o r k have tended to receive as much commentary as his accomplishments. His reputation as a poet w a s further diminished by his soldier of fortune life-style. N o t only did he spend a year in jail for having killed a y o u n g man in 1925, but he himself w a s killed by a Chilean w o r k e r w h o believed that he had been bilked out of money in one of C h o c a n o ' s many get-rich-quick schemes. Nevertheless, it is easy to recognize w h y his verse w a s received with such enthusiasm during the thirty-nine years between the publication of his first collection, En la aldea, and that of his ninth, Primacías de oro de Indias, w i t h an especially triumphant reception being given to his principal w o r k , Alma América: poemas indo españoles. His vision w a s Hispanic rather than European; he even criticized D a r í o for his recourse to French models and chided other Latin Americans for their fascination w i t h Europe. His pride in A m e r i c a and his hopes for its future — evident, in part, in his vociferous support of the M e x i c a n Revolution - are expressed in a language that is stirringly dramatic, strong, and assertive. T h e p o w e r of his poetry relies upon a keen sense of rhythm and an unflinching sense of purpose. His tone is o v e r w h e l m i n g l y optimistic, confident, and direct; philosophic anguish and doubt, as well as poetic suggestion and subtlety, were left to others. " B l a s ó n " from Alma América, reveals both his artistic strengths and the egomaniacal nearsightedness that has made him unpalatable to some modern readers. Soy el cantor de América autóctono y salvaje; mi lira tiene un alma, mi canto un ideal. M i verso no se mece colgado de un ramaje con un vaivén pausado de hamaca tropical. . . Cuando me siento Inca, le rindo vasallaje al Sol, que me da el cetro de su poder real; cuando me siento hispano y evoco el Coloniaje parecen mis estrofas trompetas de cristal . . . M i fantasía viene de un abolengo moro: los Andes son de plata, pero el León de oro: y las dos astas fundo con épico fragor. La sangre es española e incaico es el latido; ¡y de no ser poeta, quizás yo hubiese sido un blanco aventurero o un indio emperador! [I am the singer of native and wild America; my lyre has a soul, my song an ideal. M y poetry does not rock from branches with a measured sway of a tropical hammock. . . 65


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When I feel Incan, I render obedience to the Sun, which gives me the sceptre of its royal power; when I feel Hispanic and I evoke Colonial rule, my stanzas seem crystal trumpets. . . M y imagination comes from a Moorish ancestry: the Andes are of silver, but the Lion is of gold: and I forge the t w o lances with epic noise. T h e blood is Spanish and Incan is the beat; and if I were not a poet, perhaps I would have been a white adventurer or an Indian emperor!] Delmira

Agustini

Delmira Agustini's life and career can be summarized with a few short sentences that belie the p o w e r and complexity of their legacy. She began to publish poetry in small journals at the age of sixteen. By 1907 she had published her first v o l u m e of verse, El libro blanco. In 1910 her second collection of poetry, Cantos de la mañana, appeared, and in 1913 she published Los cálices vacíos w i t h an opening p o e m by R u b é n D a r í o . In it she announced her next b o o k , Los astros del abismo, w h i c h w o u l d appear posthumously in 1924 w i t h the title El rosario de Eros. Agustini w a s killed in 1 9 1 4 by her ex-husband, w h o m she had taken as a lover. Because she is so much younger than the other modernist poets, she is often classified - along w i t h Alfonsina Storni (Argentina, 1892-1938), Juana de Ibarbourou (Uruguay, 1 8 9 5 - 1 9 7 9 ) , and Gabriela Mistral (Chile, 1889-1957) - as a Postmodernist. She shared w i t h these later female poets (and w i t h her compatriot and contemporary M a r i a Eugenia V a z Ferreira [1880-1925]) innovative perspectives on art, love, feminine sexuality, and the role of w o m e n , that affected her imagery and tone and that distanced her from the earlier male Modernists, yet she maintained during her short and turbulent life a strong affinity for the principal elements of modernist verse. Her vocabulary is at different moments sensuous, ornate, evocative, and exotic. Her descriptions are textured by subtly nuanced adjectives and by references to precious stones, flowers, animals, and opulent objects. Her images affirm their modernist roots in their detail, p o w e r , and sensuality but reject established patterns of (male) perception; they are innovative and dramatic, based on shocking connections that assert the individual and idiosyncratic nature of her experience. Her struggle against imposing, inflexible, and unforgiving structures - social and poetic — appears most often and most explicitly in her pieces on love and art and in her repeated allusions to sadness, suffering, and death. It has been said that love w a s Agustini's great theme, yet it is not an easy or idealized love that she portrays, for it embraces both pain and pleasure, surrender and rejection, p o w e r and impotence. Whether this dark and 66


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tortured vision is grounded in decadent art, sado-masochistic tendencies, or in the belief in the voluptuousness of death (as suggested by D o r i s T . Stephens), suffering and destruction, in an uncannily prophetic manner, are linked to love and love is linked, in turn, to a breaking out and a w a y . W h a t is broken are norms, expectations, traditional male (and modernist) perspectives on sexuality, authority, and transcendence. T h e s e very issues forged her views on art as well. W h i l e Agustini shares the modernist aspiration to an art that makes sense of the universe and that is redemptive, she affirms the suffering and despair that constitute the nature of the artistic process as the poet confronts time-honored models, seeks to express the ineffable, and aspires to exceed human, poetic, and stereotypical limitations. A s Silvia M o l l o y has s h o w n ( " D o s lecturas del cisne: R u b e n D a r i o y Delmira A g u s t i n i " ) , in " N o c t u r n o , " modernist art, its v o c a b u l a r y , setting, and tone are ritual ized only to be e x p l o d e d in its surprising, touching, and frightful inversion of the image of the s w a n . Agustini identifies herself as the s w a n that stains the lake with its b l o o d as it tries to take flight. In this p o e m as in many others she shouts the danger of reaching beyond. L o n g i n g and desire tear at the idealized realms of art and love, turning the passionate poet into w h a t she envisions in other p o e m s as a w i l d beast, a vampire, or an angel w h o has lost her w i n g s . Agustini w r o t e within the modernist framework at the same time that she struggled against it. H e r w o r k is a response, at times violent and iconoclastic, to M o d e r n i s m , to the poetry of R u b e n D a r i o , and to traditional society. It is this antagonistic relationship to M o d e r n i s m that has linked her to Postmodernism. Y e t her poetry - as well as that of G o n z a l e z M a r t i n e z , Eguren, L u g o n e s , Herrera y Reissig, and that of D a r i o himself — under-scores that the demarcation between M o d e r n i s m and Postmodernism is imprecise. W i t h D a r i o ' s turn t o w a r d a simpler, more introspective, less decorative style as early as 1901, w i t h the radical innovations by poets like L u g o n e s and Herrera y Reissig as early as 1905, the changes that at one time were identified w i t h Postmodernism can n o w be seen as adjustments within the modernist m o v e m e n t itself. T h e true rupture comes w i t h the A v a n t - G a r d e and its fundamental loss of faith in the modernist w o r l d v i e w , in analogy, and in the p o w e r of the w o r d to reveal an eternal order and beauty that is hidden by the chaos of everyday existence. By 1922, with the publication of Trilce by Vallejo, the Vanguardia w a s clearly established. T h e r e were, nevertheless, poets still writing in a style derivative of M o d e r n i s m . T h i s chronologically untidy g r o u p continued to alter the face of M o d e r n i s m but not its fundamental Weltanschauung. In addition to the female poets already mentioned, the f o l l o w i n g are generally considered to be the most important of these writers: José Juan 67


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T a b l a d a ( M e x i c o , 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 4 5 ) , Regino E. Boti ( C u b a , 1878-1958), C a r l o s Pezoa Veliz (Chile, 1879-1908), Enrique Banchs (Argentina, 1888-1968), Luis C a r l o s L ó p e z ( C o l o m b i a , 1883-1950), Porfirio Barba Jacob ( C o l o m bia, 1883-1942), R a m ó n L ó p e z Velarde ( M e x i c o , 1 8 8 8 - 1 9 2 1 ) , B a l d o m e r o Fernández M o r e n o (Argentina, 1886-1950), M a c e d o n i o Fernández (Argentina, 1 8 7 4 - 1 9 5 2 ) , Luis Llorens T o r r e s (Puerto R i c o , 1878-1944), Rafael A r é v a l o M a r t i n e z (Guatemala, 1884—1975), C a r l o s Sabat Ercasty (Uruguay, 1887-1982), José Eustasio Rivera ( C o l o m b i a , 1888-1928), A l f o n s o Reyes ( M e x i c o , 1889-1959), Andrés Eloy Blanco (Venezuela, 1 8 9 7 - 1 9 5 5 ) , Dulce M a r i a L o y n a z ( C u b a , 1903-).


[ 2 ] Modernist prose Aníbal González

T h e most cursory glance at the collected w o r k s of the major Spanish A m e r i c a n Modernistas [Modernists] s h o w s that the majority of these writings were prose. A n unprejudiced reading of that prose soon reveals that most of it is of a quality equal to the M o d e r n i s t s ' best verse w o r k s , or to the prose w o r k s being written in Europe and the United States at about the same time. Shortly after the M o d e r n i s t movement w a n e d in the late 1920s, critics, influenced on the one hand by the prestige of the telluric narratives, such as La vorágine (1923) [The Vortex] and Doña Bárbara (1929) [Doña Bárbara], and on the other by the splendor of modernist poetry and that of its successors, such as Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), Pablo N e r u d a ( 1 9 0 4 973)> César Vallejo (1892-1938), and the Generation of 1927 in Spain, began to value Modernismo [Modernism] primarily as a poetic m o v e m e n t and to ignore or reject the achievements of modernist prose. W h e n the M o d e r n i s t s ' prose w a s studied at all, it w a s usually in a fragmentary manner and subordinated to poetry. T h u s , for e x a m p l e , fragments of essays and chronicles by José M a r t í (1853-1895), M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera (1859-1895), and José Enrique R o d ó ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 1 7 ) were studied for their value as "poetic p r o s e . " Scant attention w a s paid to w o r k s in their entirety and to the ideas about art, literature, and society expressed in them, not only because some of these ideas had b e c o m e unfashionable, but also because many had in fact become deeply ingrained in the fabric of Spanish A m e r i c a n writing and were accepted w i t h o u t question. In the case of some writers, such as José M a r t i , w h o s e w o r k is mostly in prose, and w h o s e prose is as idiosyncratic in its stylistic and ideological content as his poetry (if not more so), eminent critics such as Juan M a n n e l l o (1898-1977) w e n t so far as to exclude him from the modernist m o v e m e n t altogether, letting their preconceived notions about the nature of M o d e r n i s m obscure the facts of literary history. Indeed, modernist prose as a w h o l e w a s suppressed or ignored by critics in order to preserve I



LITERATURE

the notion - fomented by Vanguardistas [Avant-Gardists] and " T e l l u r i c " writers alike - of M o d e r n i s m as a mostly frivolous and formalistic poetic movement, a sort of "last fling" of the Spanish A m e r i c a n belle époque before the political and social issues of twentieth-century Spanish A m e r i can history swept it into oblivion. In recent years a thorough réévaluation of M o d e r n i s m has been taking place, spearheaded by the comments of poet-critics like O c t a v i o Paz (b. 1914); particularly in his b o o k Los bijos del limo (1974) [Children of the Mire] and the explicit evocations of M o d e r n i s m found in w o r k s by writers of the Spanish A m e r i c a n narrative " B o o m , " from El recurso del método (1974) [Reasons of State] by Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), to El amor en los tiempos del côlera (1985) [Love in the Times of Cholera] by Gabriel G a r c i a M a r q u e z (b. 1928). T h e attention paid to M o d e r n i s m by contem porary Spanish A m e r i c a n narrators strongly suggests that its legacy is by no means limited to poetry, and that M o d e r n i s m w a s , to b o r r o w a phrase from P a z , " a literature of f o u n d a t i o n . " Indeed, the study of modernist prose on its o w n terms, as well as in its relationship with modernist poetry, s h o w s M o d e r n i s m to have been a profound revolution in Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. A l t h o u g h they did not write manifestoes - as the later Vanguardia [Avant-Garde] movements did - the Modernists followed a coherent set of ideas about literature that amounted to a virtual p r o g r a m for the establishment of an authentically Spanish A m e r i c a n form of writing. A s a l w a y s , M a r t i w a s the precursor in this respect; suffice it to recall his notes on h o w to establish " L i t e r a t u r e " (with a capital L) in A m e r i c a : "Because w e have displays and birth-cries of our o w n Literature, and r a w materials for it, and loose, vibrant, and very powerful notes - but w e d o not have our o w n Literature. T h e r e is no writing, w h i c h is expression, until there is an essence to be expressed by it. N o r will there be Spanish A m e r i c a n literature until there is - Spanish A m e r i c a . " Despite the frivolous image they assiduously cultivated, the M o d e r n i s t s ' prose s h o w s their deep preoccupation w i t h broad cultural and social issues, and particularly with the relation between literature, culture, and society. It should be noted that the early Modernists (such as M a r t i , Gutierrez Nâjera, and the y o u n g R u b e n D a r i o [1867-1916]) were less interested in achieving a u t o n o m y for Spanish A m e r i c a n literature than in raising its level of competence. C o n s o n a n t w i t h the idea of " p r o g r e s s " then prevalent, they w a n t e d to create a literature that could be judged by the same high standards applied to that of Europe; a literature stylistically and ideologically " u p - t o - d a t e . " Despite their later (and essentially political) " A m e r i c a n i s m , " the Modernists w e r e not cultural nationalists in t o d a y ' s sense o f the term. A t the cultural level, their nationalism w a s not so much 70


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based on difference as on creative assimilation. Like other Spanish A m e r i c a n writers before and after them, the Modernists suffered little if any " a n x i e t y of influence" w i t h regard to their European models. Modernists prose a l l o w s us a backstage glimpse, so to speak, of h o w the Modernists proceeded to become " m o d e r n . " A n important element in this process w a s the M o d e r n i s t s ' recourse to philology. A s the French thinker M i c h e l Foucault has pointed out in The Order of Things, "Literature is the refutation of philology (which is, nevertheless, its twin): it submits the language of g r a m m a r to the r a w p o w e r of speech and thus discovers the savage and imperious nature of w o r d s . " F e w Modernists w o u l d have disagreed w i t h this observation, nor w i t h Ernest R e n a n ' s assertion in UAvenir de la science (1890) that "the modern spirit, that is to say, rationalism, criticism, liberalism, w a s founded on the same day as philology. The founders of the modern spirit are the philologists''' (Renan's emphasis). T h e major Modernists read with passionate interest the w o r k s of French philologists such as R e n a n and H i p p o l y t e T a i n e as well as those of Spanish and Spanish A m e r i c a n philologists and literary historians such as M i g u e l A n t o n i o C a r o (1843-1909), Rufino José C u e r v o ( 1 8 4 4 - 1 9 1 1 ) , and M a r c e l i n o M e n é n d e z y Pelayo. Philology, w i t h its encyclopedic cosmopolitanism, its vision of cultural renewal, its interest in religion, and above all its notion of language as an object, as a thing e n d o w e d w i t h a concreteness and history of its o w n , w a s one of the M o d e r n i s t s ' chief models for their literary endeavor. A n o t h e r important cultural institution from w h i c h the Modernists learned a great deal w a s journalism. Virtually all Modernists w o r k e d as journalists at some point in their careers. T h e lack of publishing houses in late nineteenth-century Spanish A m e r i c a made journalism the only regular outlet for literary production. M o r e o v e r , their w o r k as journal ists, w h i c h a l l o w e d them to m a k e a living from writing, satisfied the M o d e r n i s t s ' desire to become professional writers. Journalism, h o w e v e r , probably taught the Modernists far more than they w o u l d have w a n t e d to k n o w about writing. L i k e philology, journalism makes use of texts in its daily activity, and it also aspires to an empirical understanding of the w o r l d . Nevertheless, while philology regards texts as objects of k n o w l edge, journalism considers them merchandise; while philology seeks to produce, from textual analysis, a totalizing synthesis, journalism only seeks to capture the instant, the fleeting moment, in all its empirical detail, w i t h o u t attempting a synthesis. In addition, journalism undermines the idea of the " a u t h o r " - so vital to nineteenth-century literature and philology - because w h a t matters most in journalism is information itself and not the individual w h o transmits it. In the end, journalism led the Modernists to realize that — philological d o g m a notwithstanding — 71



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writing is not a transcendental activity, and that literature, like the other arts, has no "essence," that it is, in the Kantian phrase, "purposiveness w i t h o u t p u r p o s e " (Critique of Judgment, 1790). T h e M o d e r n i s t s ' acquaintance w i t h philology and journalism, along w i t h the general trend t o w a r d institutionalization in nineteenth-century society, led them to also view literature as an institution, with its o w n coherent rules, standards of quality, and general code of behavior of its members. T h e i r main model for literature as an institution came from French literature, traditionally one of the most institutionalized in Europe, with its schools, cenacles, and academies. A s their prose reveals, h o w e v e r , the Modernists were far from being mere imitators of their French models. (In any case, it is questionable whether one can speak of imitation from one language to another, and the Modernists were certainly more than just translators.) T h e i r relationship vis-à-vis French literature and culture w a s analogous to that of G a r c i l a s o , Boscan, and Herrera w i t h Italian literature during the sixteenth century; they studied, analyzed, and critically assimilated certain elements of foreign literatures as a means of renewing their o w n . F r o m the literature of their European counterparts, the Modernists learned, a b o v e all, to subvert philology by using w o r d s not only with an awareness of their e t y m o l o g y but also of their musicality. W o r d s were thus turned from historically determined objects of k n o w l e d g e into objects of pleasure w h i c h could be collected and combined anachronistically, in a " v e r y ancient and very m o d e r n " w a y (to b o r r o w D a r i o ' s phrase from Cantos de vida y esperanza [1905]), like pieces of bric-à-brac upon a shelf. It is also important to stress that modernist writing presupposes that there is a profound unity and harmony to the c o s m o s , and that most, if not all, of h u m a n k n o w l e d g e has already been codified and collected in a single place: in other w o r d s , modernist writing presupposes the existence of a Library. T h e metaphor of the Library is shared by both literature and philology. It stands for an ideal plane, a kind of intertextual no-man'sland, where philological and literary texts jostle each other and where their placement within an arbitrary scheme (in alphabetical order, for instance) neutralizes their delicate interplay of similarities and differences. M o d e r n i s m w a s , to a large extent, the appropriation and partial reorganization of the Library of European culture by Spanish A m e r i c a . W h e n they entered the Library, the Modernists s a w that philology stood, in R e n a n ' s terms, for "the modern spirit, that is to say, rationalism, criticism, liberalism," while literature (through a perverse use of philological methodology) had become ever more concerned w i t h an archaeological research of its o w n nature and origins. H o w e v e r , the Modernists also understood that philology and literature were not merely institutions (with canonical texts, administrators, and locales: the Collège de France 72 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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or the poetic cenacles), but also discourses, w a y s of organizing k n o w l edge, and that as such they could be taken up at certain moments and for certain purposes and then abandoned. T h e Modernists did not choose between the extremes of R e n a n (in philology) and M a l l a r m é (in literature in its purest expression) : they t o o k from both w h a t they considered useful. N o t , it must be pointed out, from mere eclecticism, but because they perceived that both discourses arose from the same problematic of linguistic representation, and that the terms of one could be easily translated into the other as long as p h i l o l o g y ' s claims of truth and authority were placed in suspension. W e have seen briefly h o w the study of modernist prose can help us to understand better the nature of Spanish A m e r i c a n M o d e r n i s m . Let us n o w examine more specifically the various modernist prose genres: the chronicle, the short story, the essay, and the novel. T h e chronicle w a s the first prose genre favored by the Modernists and in it, as Ivan A . Schulman has observed ("Reflexiones en torno a la definición del m o d e r n i s m o " ) , the M o d e r n i s t s ' aesthetic first t o o k shape. In many instances, chronicles account for more than two-thirds of the M o d e r n i s t s ' published writings, as can be seen in the obras completas of such major Modernists as M a r t í , Gutiérrez Nájera, D a r í o , A m a d o N e r v o (1870-1919), and Enrique G ó m e z Carrillo (1873-1927). T h i s genre con sisted of brief newspaper articles on virtually any subject, written in a self consciously literary style. T h e s e articles were meant to be entertaining as well as informative. In fact, h o w e v e r , the Modernists made of them much more than they were supposed to be in terms of their content. T h e chronicles became literary laboratories where the Modernists tried out new styles and ideas and made these k n o w n to other writers. F r o m their beginnings in French journalism of the nineteenth century, the chronicles were at the intersection of three textual institutions: philology, literature, and journalism. A s a journalistic genre, the chronicle had to convey news of current events and be subject to the l a w s of supply and demand, since from a purely journalistic standpoint the chronicle w a s simply merchandise; as a literary genre, the chronicle had to be entertain ing and creative while also possessing the solid, well-crafted nature of a w o r k written with the philological awareness of the historicity of language. M o d e r n i s t chroniclers also often used the genre to reflect essayistically on the nature of time and history and on the question of modernity. T h e M e x i c a n M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera is generally credited with introducing the genre of the chronicle into Spanish A m e r i c a n journalism. T a k i n g as his model the frivolous and gossipy chroniques published by French dailies such as Le Figaro and La Cbronique Parisienne, Gutiérrez 73


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Najera made of the cronica a versatile vehicle for the M o d e r n i s t s ' literary expressions. D u r i n g his twenty years in journalism (from 1875 until his sudden death in 1895), Gutierrez Najera w r o t e countless chronicles for M e x i c a n newspapers such as El Federalista, El Partido Liberal, La Libertad, El Cronista Mexicano, and El Universal, a m o n g many others. N o n e of Gutierrez Najera's chronicles were collected during his lifetime, unless one counts the short stories published in his Cuentos frdgiles. A l l of those stories had first appeared as chronicles or as parts of chronicles, and they attest to the purposeful blurring of the distinctions between journal ism and fiction that is the hallmark of Gutierrez Najera's w o r k in prose. A m o n g Gutierrez Najera's many chronicles, " C r o n i c a color de bitter" (1882) is a g o o d e x a m p l e of h o w he approached this genre. T h e subject of the chronicle is a description of an earthquake that rocked M e x i c o City in June, 1882. T h i s w o u l d be hard to guess by judging from the chronicle's first lines, h o w e v e r . T h e text is in second person, and in it the narrator addresses a y o u n g lady, his beloved, with w h o m he w a s having dinner at the time of the ' q u a k e , and w h o has fainted from fright: " D o n ' t tremble any more; rest here, on my breast, while I bring the cup to y o u r pale lips, as if I were giving a sick child his medicine. W o u l d y o u like me to put a few drops of cognac in y o u r tea? T h e r e ' s nothing to be afraid of anymore: laugh, smile. T h e wineglasses no longer dance upon the table, and the servants'-bell cord no longer strikes the walls. T h e earthquake is over, and matter, eternally enslaved, has ceased its sudden rebellion: only y o u r heart beats violently against m i n e . " In this chronicle, as in so many others, Gutierrez Najera subjectivizes objective phenomena (such as the earth quake) by viewing them from the perspective of the turn-of-the-century bourgeois interior, w h i c h , as Walter Benjamin, in his w e l l - k n o w n essay, "Paris, capital of the 19th century," reminds us, could be either an office, a b e d r o o m , a library, or a museum. Gutierrez Najera's interior is, like Benjamin's, a place where the self takes refuge from temporality and history. T h e temporality of the interior is arbitrary and capricious, subject to the w h i m s of the self; Najera indicates this in his text w h e n he describes h o w the 'quake stopped all the clocks in the city, but then adds (with an allusion to the myth of the W a n d e r i n g Jew), " m y hand will m o v e the pendulum once again, and time will march on like that unhappy H e b r e w w h o did not give Christ water to drink." T h e interior is also a refuge for love, for eroticism; the w o m a n ' s fainting spell during the 'quake is described in terms sufficiently ambi guous to suggest a m o m e n t of erotic passion. Lastly, the many descrip tions of the effects of the earthquake on the city's public monuments are playful and humorous: this is another trait of the interior, where according to Benjamin, play is substituted for productive w o r k . T h e text of this chronicle as a w h o l e is structured as an opposition 74 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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between the interior (with its arbitrary temporality, its hallucinations, games, and erotic pleasures) and the exterior (with its linear temporality, its m o n o t o n o u s and orderly routine). T h i s opposition may be seen in turn as a metaphor of the tension between literature and journalism present in Gutierrez Najera's chronicles. T h e earthquake appears in Gutierrez Najera's text as a gratuitous, almost playful p h e n o m e n o n , and its causes are described using a fairy-tale terminology: dwarfs and giants caused the earthquake, Gutierrez Najera's narrator tells his beloved, because they w a n t e d to scare the lovers. Y e t w h a t is more interesting, the earthquake inverts the usual relationship between exterior and interior by collapsing the facades of houses, letting us see w h a t the inhabitants were doing, and turning for a few hours the interior into the exterior. Suddenly, as the interior invades the outside w o r l d , imagination and passion run rampant; men, w o m e n , and children scream in fright, running out into the streets half-dressed or w i t h whatever clothes they could g r a b , as if it w e r e C a r n i v a l . Indeed, the text suggests a correspondence between the earth quake and transgression of the conventional, public limits of erotic conduct. T h e ' q u a k e w o u l d thus be the exterior equivalent of the sudden inner movements of passion (whether caused by love or by fear), as well as an emblem of the deep unity between nature and the self from w h i c h (in the M o d e r n i s t s ' post-romantic view) literature arises. H o w e v e r , this correspondence between interior and exterior, between nature and the self, lasts only brief instants, and the a m b i g u o u s m o m e n t of literary and erotic plenitude gives w a y to linear temporality and a feeling of emptiness and death. A s Gutierrez Najera, with his typical melancholy, reflects at the end of this chronicle: "Fountains dry up, carnations wither, and love dies o u t . " A s a consequence of Gutierrez Najera's deep subjectivism, in his chronicles real-world events and objects are seen as if on a stage, and rather than providing k n o w l e d g e , they provide amusement. T h e y are also miniaturized and, in the end, fictionalized. In spite of their journalistic nature, Gutierrez Najera w a s able to fictionalize his chronicles mainly because they were conceived as forms of entertainment directed t o w a r d s a predominantly female readership. Y e t Gutierrez Najera still made use of fiction even w h e n writing on allegedly " m a s c u l i n e " subjects such as politics, as can be seen in his series of chronicles entitled collectively Plato del dia. In these, he used fictional techniques in order to avoid the censorship prevalent in the press of Porfirian M e x i c o . Gutierrez Najera also made copious use of pseudonyms (his best-known is " E l D u q u e J o b , " but he used more than twenty others), w h i c h again gave him relative freedom both from censorship and from journalistic restraints w h e n writing his chronicles. For Gutierrez Najera, the chronicler's craft w a s symbolized in the 75



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mythical figure of Proteus. T h i s G r e c o - R o m a n sea deity w a s famous for his metamorphosis but also, following a renaissance tradition of w h i c h Gutierrez Najera w a s surely a w a r e , he w a s considered ambiguously both as a founder of cities and giver of l a w s and as a perverse magician, a creator of disorder and discord. In a similar fashion, the chronicler had to be simultaneously a teacher and a c l o w n , a hard-nosed reporter and a visionary dreamer; in the end, the chronicler had to be all things to all people, even at the risk of abandoning a stable and original literary persona. If Gutierrez Nàjera introduced the chronicle into Spanish A m e r i c a n literature, it w a s the C u b a n José M a r t i w h o gave it a wider diffusion and greater intellectual depth. M a r t i ' s chronicles can be divided into three types: the artistic and literary, the reportorial, and the " d o m e s t i c . " T h i s latter type encompasses the texts M a r t i w r o t e during the 1890s for the section of his newspaper, Patria, entitled " E n C a s a . " In these he des cribed, in the same lyrical yet familiar style one also finds in his letters, the modest social and political activities of the C u b a n emigre c o m m u n i t y in N e w Y o r k , T a m p a , and K e y W e s t . T h e artistic and literary chronicles, on the other hand, were published during the 1880s in such diverse journals and dailies as La Nation, El Partido Liberal ( M e x i c o ) , and the Revista Venezolana. T h e s e consisted of reviews of art exhibits and b o o k s , written in the lush descriptive style characteristic of the "artistic p r o s e " of the Modernists (of w h i c h more will be said later). H o w e v e r , it is in the reportorial chronicles that M a r t i uses the fullest range of stylistic and rhetorical devices. Published during the 1880s and 1890s, and collected in M a r t i ' s Obras completas under the headings "Escenas norteamericanas" and "Escenas e u r o p e a s , " these chronicles are " r e p o r t o r i a l " because they deal w i t h the sort of events usually covered by reporters: political controversies, economic n e w s , crime stories, disasters, etc. H o w e v e r , as is usually the case w i t h M a r t i , there is far more in these texts than meets the eye. It has frequently been remarked that M a r t i ' s "Escenas norteamericanas" have an epic scope, richness of descriptive detail, and vividness of characterization and description that gives them an almost novelistic character in the mold of the vast nineteeth-century romans fleuve like those of Balzac, G a l d ó s , or Z o l a . M a r t i ' s method in writing these chronicles w a s quasi-philological. A l t h o u g h he lived in N e w Y o r k at the time, he w a s a l w a y s short of money and could not personally witness many of the events he described (such as the trial and execution of four anarchists in C h i c a g o , in N o v e m b e r , 1887, or the establishment of a frontier t o w n in O k l a h o m a in A p r i l , 1889). Instead, taking advantage of N e w Y o r k ' s burgeoning press, he bought four or five copies of the major dailies and systematically c o m p a r e d their 76


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coverage of the same event, preparing a composite narrative in a style so lively and descriptive that it seemed a firsthand account. It is difficult to single out from such a prodigiously large and varied body of narrative a specific reportorial chronicle as more typical of M a r t i ' s writing than others. A n often-quoted and often-reprinted one is " E l terremoto de C h a r l e s t o n . " Contrast between this text and Gutierrez Najera's depiction of the M e x i c a n earthquake is enlightening; while Gutierrez Najera subjectivizes the event, scaling it d o w n to the level of a d r a w i n g - r o o m drama, M a r t i ' s chronicle attempts to describe the admit tedly far more devastating Charleston earthquake of 1886, and its aftermath, in all their terrible grandeur. M a r t i ' s style in this chronicle is thus highly oratorical and sententious, skilfully blending description w i t h analysis while seeking to create the impression of immediacy through the evocation of the spoken w o r d - " T o say it is to see it", in M a r t i ' s o w n phrase - and in his use of the historical present tense. Ever the political leader (which Gutierrez Najera w a s not), M a r t i also uses the circumstance of the earthquake as a pretext to reflect on the nature of time and history and to present his o w n ideas about the nature of human " p r o g r e s s . " O n e interesting aspect about " E l terremoto de C h a r l e s t o n " is the considerable attention M a r t i pays to the role of Blacks in the rescue and reconstruction efforts in Charleston immediately after the earthquake. T h e natural catastrophe appears at first to have broken not only the buildings but also the spirit of the once proud and beautiful city; but spirits soon revive, and it is the Blacks of Charleston w h o are the first to rally spontaneously to the task of rebuilding. M a r t i sees the Blacks as a people e n d o w e d w i t h a superlative spiritual strength and resilience that slavery itself could not destroy. In a m o v i n g passage of the chronicle, M a r t i relates h o w spontaneous " r e v i v a l meetings" broke out in the streets of Charleston w h e r e Blacks and Whites together sang "spirituals" and prayed. H e describes with admiration the "sacred elders," the elderly black men and w o m e n w h o emerged from the disaster imbued w i t h " s u c h sacramental p o w e r that the whites, the cultivated whites themselves, full of veneration, joined the music of their troubled souls to that tender and ridiculous dialect." M a r t i ' s interest in the role of the Blacks during the Charleston earthquake arises from the need to find in his discourse an element that w o u l d explain the renewed impetus w i t h w h i c h the people of Charleston begin to rebuild after the 'quake: w h a t is it that stops the people of Charleston, after the ' q u a k e , from becoming disheartened and m o v i n g a w a y ? F r o m where comes the energy that bridges the gap in the history of the city opened by the ' q u a k e , and assures the continuity of human progress? T h e Blacks in M a r t i ' s text function as mediators between the 77


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cataclysmic forces of nature and the p o w e r of human creativity. M a r t i , w h o s e vision of society w a s influenced by thermodynamics, saw society as a great steam engine w h i c h ultimately derived its force from the vitality of the w o r k i n g classes and marginal social groups. In " E l terremoto de C h a r l e s t o n , " it is the B l a c k s ' inner strength, expressed through the hypnotic rhythm of their "spirituals," that serves to heal the w o u n d s inflicted on Charleston and to bring back the normal rhythms of temporality and history. Further reflections on " p r o g r e s s " and its effects on literature are to be found in the chronicles of R u b é n D a r í o . After the deaths of Gutiérrez Nájera and M a r t í , D a r í o , w h o w a s in many w a y s their literary heir, became the undisputed leader of M o d e r n i s m . N o w h e r e is his debt to those earlier writers more evident than in his chronicles. Published and reprinted in Spanish and Spanish A m e r i c a n journals and dailies, they were collected in b o o k s such as Los raros, España contemporánea, Peregrinaciones (1901), La caravana pasa (1903), Tierras solares, and El viaje a Nicaragua. D a r í o ' s chronicles, like M a r t í ' s , form a vast b o d y of writings w h i c h can be divided into three basic types: the artistic and literary, reportorial, and travel chronicles. Unlike the chronicles of M a r t i and Gutiérrez Nájera, h o w e v e r , the quality of D a r í o ' s is very uneven; far t o o many (especially the reportorial chronicles) were hastily written occasional pieces. T h e b o o k s mentioned a b o v e , h o w e v e r , contain some of D a r í o ' s best prose. Los raros collects the most outstanding examples of D a r i o ' s artistic and literary chronicles; these consisted of impressionistic profiles of past and present authors from Europe and Spanish A m e r i c a , selected because of their marginality to their respective traditions. T h e majority of the authors D a r í o chose to highlight in these chronicles were French; most were (and still remain) secondary figures, such as Jean Richepin, Rachilde, or Laurent T a i l h a d e , but others, like Lautréamont, were later to be revered by the A v a n t - G a r d e . A m o n g the non-French authors, D a r í o includes only t w o Spanish A m e r i c a n s , both C u b a n s : A u g u s t o de A r m a s (1869-1893) and José M a r t í . D e A r m a s w r o t e in French and is a decidedly minor figure; D a r í o ' s chronicle on M a r t i , h o w e v e r , is important because it w a s one of the first literary evaluations written after M a r t í ' s death, and it served to call attention to M a r t í ' s stature as a founding figure of Modernism. D a r í o ' s travel chronicles also contain fine prose, and are still w o r t h reading, particularly for w h a t they reveal about his inner life. In them, D a r í o consistently presents himself as a " p i l g r i m " (although his final destination is unclear), as a pathetic wanderer - sometimes an exile, sometimes an expatriate - w h o is also a prisoner of his o w n celebrity. 78


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Indeed, the major difference between his predecessors' chronicles and D a r i o ' s is the latter's frequently autobiographical, confessional tone. Conversion and its usual aftermath, confession, are topics of turn-ofthe-century writing in Europe and Spanish A m e r i c a that are particularly visible in D a r i o ' s mature poetry of Cantos de vida y esperanza and after, as well as in his prose. D a r i o ' s confessionalism arises not only from his increasing celebrity during the 1890s, but also from literary-historical and personal motivations. D a r i o , unlike M a r t i , had become fascinated w i t h the w o r k s of the French decadents of the end of the century, such as Joris Karl H u y s m a n ' s novel À rebours (1883). D a r i o ' s " d e c a d e n t " phase is visible in the poetry of his Prosas prof anas (1896) and in the prose of Los raros. H o w e v e r , D a r i o w a s profoundly affected (like other Modernists) by the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r of 1898, and the deaths of the earlier Modernists (Julian del C a s a l [1863-1893], Gutierrez Nàjera and M a r t i , in 1895, d J é A s u n c i o n Silva [1865-1896]). A l s o , already aware of his personal problems w i t h alcoholism, D a r i o g r e w disgusted w i t h " D e c a dentism" and felt the need to change his attitude and give his writings greater social relevance. T h i s impulse is clearly visible in his travel chronicles, especially in El viaje a Nicaragua, where D a r i o tries to c o m e to grips with his troubled personality and his celebrity (and the increased social responsibilities that came w i t h it) while giving an account of his triumphant return to his native country in 1907. Like every modernist chronicle, El viaje a Nicaragua has several levels of interpretation: on the surface, it is simply a travel narrative; on a deeper level, it is the story of a conversion; and on yet another level, it is a meditation on the meaning of history in the context of the issues concerned w i t h the return. A s a travel narrative, D a r i o ' s text describes in part the poet's itinerary from his departure from Le H a v r e until his arrival at the port of C o r i n t o , in N i c a r a g u a , after a brief stop in N e w Y o r k (Chapter 1), and D a r i o ' s visit to the N i c a r a g u a n cities of M a s a y a (Chapter 9) and L e o n (Chapter 10). D a r i o also devotes a chapter to describing his visit to a coffee plantation (Chapter 2). T h e remaining seven chapters in the b o o k constitute a sort of brief cultural history of N i c a r a g u a , covering aspects as varied as the ethnic b a c k g r o u n d of the N i c a r a g u a n people (Chapter 3), the origins and development of N i c a r a g u a n literature (Chapter 4), and the character traits of N i c a r a g u a n w o m e n (Chapter 7). W h a t brings stylistic unity to all these sections is D a r i o ' s " I " w h i c h travels through the text, coordinating, explaining, quoting sources as diverse as the colonial chronicler Francisco L o p e z de G ó m a r a ( 1 5 1 0 - 1 5 7 2 ) and the N i c a r a g u a n historian José D o l o r e s Garnez (1851-?). T h i s is not, h o w e v e r , the overbearing " I " of the philologist or critic; D a r i o ' s is much more humble and w e a k ; it is an " I " in search of peace and happiness. a n

o s

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Referring to the coffee plantations, D a r i o states: " M o r e than once I have thought that happiness may indeed dwell in one of those delightful paradises, and that a certain restless and passionate pilgrim could have taken refuge in those u n k n o w n realms instead of crisscrossing the vast earth in search of unattainable ideals and a nonexistent p e a c e . " El viaje a Nicaragua is structured around an autobiographic " I " that casts the tale of its search for peace as a pilgrimage, a return to the Origin, and a search for renewal. It is not surprising in this context that D a r i o " O r i e n t a l i z e s " N i c a r a g u a in his descriptions, since the Orient symbolized, in the romantic philology that D a r i o and the Modernists inherited, the origin of human civilization and a source of spiritual and cultural renewal. In an Orientalist frenzy, D a r i o compares N i c a r a g u a n soldiers to those of the M i k a d o , and the city of M a s a y a to B a g h d a d . N i c a r a g u a ' s prime export crop, coffee, g r o w n amid volcanic mountains, symbolizes for D a r i o the capacity of N i c a r a g u a n nature to reinvigorate his debilitated poetic p o w e r s : " O n e g o o d cup of that black drink, well prepared, contains as many problems and poems as a bottle of i n k . " A n o t h e r interesting aspect of El viaje a Nicaragua is D a r i o ' s explicit contrast of his country w i t h the United States, specifically with N e w Y o r k , w h i c h he had visited on his w a y home. T h e contrast is stated, signifi cantly, in terms of temporality and history. N i c a r a g u a , being closer to the Origin, is also a place of "frozen t i m e " (in D a r i o ' s w o r d s ) , where time has stood still at the moment of Genesis, and nature reigns in numinous silence and harmony. In N e w Y o r k , on the other hand, where " p r o g r e s s " reigns, everything is in movement; throngs hustle through vast avenues on incomprehensible errands; express elevators hurtle to the tops of huge buildings; time appears fragmented and fleeting, and disharmony and decay are the norm. N i c a r a g u a is a land of poets and poetry; N e w Y o r k is "the vast capital of the bank c h e c k . " Nevertheless, D a r i o ' s attitude t o w a r d economic and industrial " p r o g r e s s " (as represented by his comments on N e w Y o r k ) is ambiguous; elsewhere, he praises N i c a r a g u a n President José Santos Z e l a y a for increasing commerce and industry in his country, and - s o m e w h a t surprisingly in an author w h o in Azul. . . spoke disparagingly of " e l rey b u r g u é s " - speaks approvingly of the p o w e r of money: " T o d a y , as a l w a y s , money makes poetry, fills our existence with beauty, brings culture and progress, beautifies our cities, and brings relative happiness to w o r k e r s . " A m o n g the many other modernist chroniclers, special mention must be made of the Guatemalan-born Enrique G o m e z Carrillo, although he is all but forgotten today, because he w a s in his time ranked a m o n g the major Modernists solely by virtue of his abundant chronicles. G o m e z Carrillo's chronicles were written at a later stage in the history of Spanish A m e r i c a n M o d e r n i s m , w h e n the movement had achieved a truly international 80 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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status. A s with D a r i o , numerous Modernists, because of their new-found literary success, traveled abroad during the early 1900s either on speaking engagements, as diplomats, or simply as tourists. T h e i r travels t o o k them to other Spanish A m e r i c a n countries, to Europe, the M i d d l e East, and even as far as Japan. G o m e z Carrillo, w h o resided for most of his adult life in France, w a s a b o v e all a writer of travel chronicles. His descriptions of life in Paris, as well as of his travels to Greece, Egypt, and Japan, appeared in newspapers such as La Nation and La Kazon, in Buenos Aires, and El Liberal, in M a d r i d , and were collected in b o o k s with titles such as: De Marsella a Tokio, La Grecia eterna, and Sensaciones de Egipto (1918). These texts, written in a deceptively light and elegant style, contributed much to the k n o w l e d g e many of the less-traveled Modernists had of the w o r l d , and, since G o m e z Carrillo included in them generally favorable comments on the w o r k of his modernist colleagues, they also served as propaganda for the modernist movement in general. A s M a x Henriquez Urena (1885-1968) observed {Breve historia del modernismo), many of G o m e z Carrillo's superficially frivolous chronicles are in fact essays rich w i t h information and ideas, w h i c h required a long and patient process of composition. T y p i c a l of these multi-layered texts is " L a psicologia del v i a j e " (1919), a chronicle in w h i c h G o m e z Carrillo critically analyzes the three interlinked topics of conversion, confession, and pilgrimage that recur in modernist writing after the turn of the century. G o m e z Carrillo begins his text w i t h the surprising prediction particularly in v i e w of his fame as a "travel w r i t e r " - that traveling will soon be " b a n k r u p t " as a form of "intellectual penetration and s t u d y " (in his w o r d s ) . Paraphrasing the French psychologist Paul Bourget, he asks: " W h y t r a v e l . . . since w e will never be able to k n o w the souls of the people of other countries? W h y g o to far-off places in search of human documents, w h e n w e are not even capable of deciphering the documents of our o w n homeland, our o w n family, our very being. . .? T h e G r e e k s ' know thyself is but a deceitful fantasy. W e will never k n o w ourselves, just as w e will never k n o w our fellow b e i n g s . " G o m e z Carrillo's reflections on travel and travel writing spring from a deep skepticism t o w a r d the strategies of self-analysis and self-renewal of early twentieth-century writers. N o t only is the old romantic tradition of the "sentimental journey," of travel as a means of acquiring selfk n o w l e d g e , useless, G o m e z Carrillo points out, but travel itself has become unnecessary as a form of historical and philological inquiry, since there are already innumerable texts through w h i c h the researcher can more easily understand the Volksgeist of foreign countries. In view of these ideas, w h a t is the function of the travel writer? G o m e z Carrillo's reply is that the modern travel writer should simply aspire to transcribe the sights, smells, sounds, and experiences of the foreign lands he visits as 81 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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they impact on his consciousness. T h i s he must d o w i t h o u t attempting to give them a transcendental or psychologistic interpretation, or abandon ing the harmonious and artistic style of modernist prose. T h e modernist travel writer, says G ó m e z Carrillo, should be a kind of voyageur I voyeur, or, better yet, a sort of medium w h o receives and transmits the experience of travel for the benefit of his or her readers, w h o may never be able to travel themselves, or if they d o , will probably fall prey to the banal itineraries of the Baedeker or the Guide Bleu. For G ó m e z Carrillo, the modernist travel writer is the purveyor of a luxury product: a refined artistic reconstruction of unusual scenes and sensations. Indeed, sen sationalism, occasionally verging on pornography, is a c o m m o n trait of many of G ó m e z Carrillo's travel chronicles. " L a psicología del viaje" is valuable also because it s h o w s the G u a t e m a lan chronicler's awareness of the corrosive effect of the n e w techniques of representation, such as p h o t o g r a p h y and the cinema, on the nineteenthcentury notions of literature and art. M o v i e s and photographs not only m a k e travel for the sake of k n o w l e d g e and personal improvement superfluous for the ordinary individual, but they also fulfill the desire for empirical accuracy that underlies much of nineteenth-century art and writing, thus posing a challenge for the modernist writer, w h o must satisfy the public's incessant craving for n e w sensations. W h i l e G ó m e z Carrillo w a s not himself an A v a n t - G a r d i s t (he abhorred C u b i s m , for instance, as his chronicle " E l c u b i s m o " [1914] s h o w s ) , he w a s clearly a w a r e of the n e w forces that were rapidly undermining the foundations of art and life during the w a n i n g years of la belle époque, and that were opening new possibilities for artistic and literary creation. T h e genre of the modernist short story is closely associated w i t h the modernist chronicles. Indeed, M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera, one of the founders of the modernist chronicles, is also considered a precursor of the modernist short story. M a n y of the stories in Cuentos frágiles, the only b o o k of stories collected by Gutiérrez Nájera himself (others, such as Cuentos color de humo, were collected after his death), are, in fact, chronicles, or parts of chronicles. A s m a y be seen in E. K . M a p e s ' s edition of his Cuentos completos y otras narraciones, Gutiérrez Nájera often imbedded his fictions superficially in a journalistic context, from w h i c h they could later be easily detached and collected as short stories; this is the case w i t h tales such as " L a novela del tranvía," " L a venganza de M y l o r d , " and " L a hija del aire." Sometimes, h o w e v e r , the immediately referential, journalistic element is inseparable from the fictional narrative, as in " L o s amores del c o m e t a , " Gutiérrez Nájera's description of the G r e a t Sep tember C o m e t of 1882, or " L a odisea de M a d a m e T h é o , " w h o s e protagonist is the real-life French singer Louise T h é o . Gutiérrez Nájera's stories, like his chronicles, are permeated by a profound subjectivism, and 82 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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they prefigure the psychological issues that will recur in the w o r k s of virtually all subsequent modernist short-story writers, from R u b é n D a r í o to L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s (1874-1938). A n excessive sense of decorum and concern w i t h poetic form precluded many Modernists from performing in their verse the deep personal introspection that the changing concept of literature at the turn of the century demanded. Instead, the short story, a relatively " n e w " genre (after its virtual reinvention by Edgar A l l a n Poe, w h o also brought to the genre an emphasis on morbid p s y c h o l o g y and bizarre occurrences), offered them this possibility. Even D a r í o , w h o s e p o e m s " C a n t o s de vida y esperanza" and " L o f a t a l " offer some of the most anguished and devastating self-appraisals in modernist poetry, gravitated t o w a r d the short story as a means of self-analysis. A l t h o u g h the stories of Gutiérrez Nájera, D a r í o , Ñ e r v o , M a n u e l D í a z R o d r í g u e z ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 2 7 ) , and L u g o n e s - to mention the major practitioners of the genre — were sometimes little more than embellished chronicles or, at most, allegories of aesthetic theories (such as D a r í o ' s " E l pájaro a z u l " and " E l rey burgués"), one finds in many of them a recurrent preoccupation with subjectivity, w i t h the psyche. D u r i n g the same period that Freud w a s laying d o w n the foundations of psychoanalysis w i t h his studies of dreams, neuroses, and instincts, the Spanish A m e r i c a n Modernists were writing stories that focused insistently on dreams, fantasies, and aberrant behavior. Excellent e x a m ples of this m a y be seen in stories such as Gutiérrez Nájera's " E l sueño de M a g d a " (1883) and " R i p - R i p el a p a r e c i d o " (1890), D a r í o ' s numerous and scattered fantastic tales, such as " T h a n a t h o p i a " (1893), " L a pesadilla de H o n o r i o " (1894), " L a l a r v a " (1910), and " H u i t z i l o p o x t l i (Leyenda m e x i c a n a ) " (1915), Lugones's Las fuerzas extrañas, A m a d o N e r v o ' s Cuentos misteriosos, and D í a z R o d r i g u e z ' s Confidencias de Psiquis (1897), " L a s ovejas y las rosas del padre Serafín," " M ú s i c a b á r b a r a , " and " É g l o g a de v e r a n o " (all from 1922). In " E l sueño de M a g d a " (this title w a s given by the critic E. K . M a p e s , since it is one of those " i m b e d d e d stories" found in Gutiérrez Nájera's series of chronicles entitled La vida en México), Gutiérrez Nájera evokes the w o r l d of dreams in a w a y that almost prefigures Surrealism. M a g d a is a w o m a n w a t c h i n g from the balcony of her house as the rain falls in M e x i c o City; as she watches the rain, the third-person narrator relates h o w this evokes in M a g d a the fearful memories of a nightmare she had the previous night. T h e nightmare, w h i c h consists of a vision of universal deluge, ends w i t h M a g d a falling from the top of a stone cross onto a granite obelisk after having her eyes pierced by the beaks of o w l s . Gutiérrez Nájera simply relates this dream, leaving possible interpretations to be developed by the reader. T h e story " R i p - R i p el a p a r e c i d o , " is also narrated as a dream, although 83


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it begins in a more conventionally literary w a y as a gloss of W a s h i n g t o n Irving's " R i p van W i n k l e " (which Gutierrez Najera claims not to have read). Gutierrez Najera's version, like Irving's legend, is the nightmarish tale of a man w h o gets drunk and falls asleep inside a cave, where he sleeps for many years. W h e n he finally a w a k e n s , he is already old and is not recognized by his wife nor by his closest friends. In the end, R i p - R i p runs a w a y from the t o w n , and only w h e n he sees his reflection in a stream does he realize the cause of his predicament. R i p - R i p then commits suicide by d r o w n i n g himself in the stream. T h i s tale may be interpreted as an allegory of personal identity, since the narrator tells us (in a passage that suspiciously resembles a fable's " m o r a l " ) that R i p - R i p " w a s not one man, he w a s many men . . . perhaps all m e n . " D a r i o ' s " T h a n a t h o p i a " is ostensibly a horror story about a British doctor and hypnotist w h o is married to a female vampire, but the story's first-person, confessional tone (it is narrated by the doctor's son) a l l o w s it to become, ambiguously, a fable about father-son relationships. T h e protagonist and narrator, James Leen, is an eccentric English professor and expatriate living in Buenos Aires w h o tells his story to a group of friends in a beer hall. Leen tells h o w , after his mother's death, his father, w h o never s h o w e d him affection, sent him off to study at a boarding school. T h e story's surprising ending is prefigured by certain enigmatic phrases spoken by the narrator, w h i c h D a r i o underlines, such as: "Physically, I w a s the veritable image of my mother (or so I have been told) and I suppose that is why the doctor looked at me as little as possible." T h e explanation of this and other phrases is seen at the end, w h e n the narrator is taken by his father to meet his stepmother, w h o turns out to be the corpse of his mother, kept in an " u n d e a d " state by the father's hypnotic arts. " L a pesadilla de H o n o r i o , " as its title indicates, is the description of a nightmare. Enrique Anderson Imbert has pointed out (in La originalidad de Ruben Dario) the story's sources in T h o m a s D e Q u i n c e y ' s Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821), and the narrator himself quotes in translation a fragment from D e Q u i n c e y ' s b o o k : " H o w and w h e n did the following phrase by a dreamer appear in H o n o r i o ' s memory: the tyranny of the human face}" (The original phrase from D e Q u i n c e y reads: " T h a t affection w h i c h I have called the tyranny of the human face.") T h e nightmare in fact consists of an o v e r w h e l m i n g vision of a multiplicity of human faces, w h i c h gradually turn into a series of masks that signify the seven deadly sins. In the final sentence, the narrator suggests that H o n o r i o ' s hallucination or dream might have been simply the product of his drunken revelry at C a r n i v a l . A l c o h o l and drugs figure more visibly in " H u i t z i l o p o x t l i (Leyenda m e x i c a n a ) . " T h i s late story (it w a s published in 1 9 1 5 , the year before 84 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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D a r i o ' s death) is interesting mostly as D a r i o ' s rather unsuccessful attempt to m a k e sense out of an event - the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n - w h i c h contributed to the demise of the modernist ideology and aesthetic. D a r i o views the R e v o l u t i o n as an act of mass immolation in the style of the A z t e c sacrifices. T h e story's only satisfying aspect, h o w e v e r , is its evocation of an atmosphere of mystery, fanaticism, and menace. T h e first-person narrator, a journalist sent to cover the events of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , teams up with an A m e r i c a n journalist w i t h the amusing name of John Perhaps, and a bizarre Basque renegade priest turned colonel in the revolutionary army, named Reguera. O n their w a y to one of Pancho Villa's encampments, the ex-priest insistently talks about h o w "the destiny of the M e x i c a n nation is still in the hands of the primitive aboriginal deities." T h e narrator-protagonist is intrigued, and asks Reguera to elaborate. Reguera argues that M a d e r o ' s triumph w a s due to his belief in spirits and specifically to his " c o n t a c t s " w i t h the ancient A z t e c g o d s . W h i l e the narrator and Reguera talk and drink comiteco, the A m e r i c a n journalist is lost from sight along the w i n d i n g mountain road. Later, they c o m e upon a g r o u p of insurgents but are not allowed to proceed, and must spend the night beneath some trees. Before going to sleep, the narrator and Reguera share some marihuana-laced cigarettes. A dreamlike scene then ensues in w h i c h the narrator, unable to sleep and hearing the h o w l i n g of coyotes nearby, moves into the bush to investigate with gun at ready. After a while, he comes upon a grotesque scene: beneath an enormous A z t e c stone idol w h i c h the narrator recog nizes as belonging to the goddess of death, a sacrifice is taking place. T h e victim is the A m e r i c a n journalist, " M i s t e r " Perhaps. It is never made clear whether this scene is real or only a drug-induced vision; its theme of h u m a n sacrifice clearly prefigures the story's ending, h o w e v e r . T h e next day, after arriving at the insurgents' c a m p , the narrator has to be treated by a physician. H e asks for C o l o n e l Reguera, and is calmly told that the C o l o n e l "is busy right n o w . H e still has three more to s h o o t . " H o w e v e r , it is in " L a l a r v a " where D a r i o unveils some of his deepest fears. T h e narration unfolds in a spare, direct style, as a reminiscence of D a r i o ' s y o u t h in N i c a r a g u a ; the narrator and protagonist, named Isaac C o d o m a n o (who is clearly D a r i o himself), tells of the ghost stories and superstitions he heard as a child in his native land, and of his o w n encounter w i t h an apparition. In the darkened streets of his h o m e t o w n , the fifteen-year-old protagonist, c o m i n g h o m e from a serenade in a m o o d for a m o r o u s escapades, sees the figure of a w o m a n w r a p p e d in a s h a w l . H e approaches and propositions her. T o his horror, the w o m a n s h o w s herself to be a horrible " l a r v a " - a ghost - w i t h the face of a rotting corpse. A l t h o u g h this tale could easily derive from D a r i o ' s readings of baroque Spanish theatre (such as Pedro C a l d e r o n de la Barca's El mdgico 85



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prodigioso [1637]), the detailed evocation of time and place gives it a powerful confessional resonance that may point to D a r i o ' s w e l l - k n o w n alcoholic deliriums as well as to p s y c h o s e x u a l problems. N e r v o ' s approach to the psychological issues in his Cuentos misteriosos is more light-hearted, and frequently verges on satire, as in " D o n D i e g o de n o c h e , " the story of a man w h o , like Gabrielle D ' A n n u n z i o (to w h o m N e r v o alludes in the story), w a s afraid of decrepitude, and decided never to age beyond his thirty-three years; he finally dies of old age, but his "official" age on his tombstone is still thirty-three. O n the other hand, many of the best-known tales from L u g o n e s ' s Las fuerzas extranas have an underlying satirical thrust reminiscent of Jonathan Swift. L i k e the eighteenth-century Irish satirist, L u g o n e s s h o w s in these stories a grim and mordant vision of humanity. L u g o n e s ' s satire is particularly directed t o w a r d Positivism and its belief in humanity's inherent superiority over nature. T h e t w o most frequently reprinted stories of the twelve collected in Las fuerzas extranas, " L o s caballos de A b d e r a " and " Y z u r , " are g o o d examples of Lugones's Swiftian temper. T h e former, despite its mythical G r e c o - R o m a n setting, is evocative of the H o u y h n h n m s episode in Gul liver's Travels (1726); the horses of the T h r a c i a n city of A b d e r a are pampered and educated by their owners to such a degree that they become intelligent and ultimately rebel against their masters. L u g o n e s spoils the tale s o m e w h a t at the end by the deus ex machina introduction of Hercules, w h o arrives to save the city from the beasts. In " Y z u r , " h o w e v e r , there is no attempt at a " h a p p y ending"; it is the grim tale of a chimpanzee bought by a linguist w h o s e enthusiasm for language instruc tion is reminiscent of G e o r g e Bernard S h a w ' s character of Henry Higgins in Pygmalion. In this case, h o w e v e r , the scientist's obsession w i t h m a k i n g Y z u r speak human w o r d s leads to the ape's becoming, in the narrator's w o r d s , " s i c k w i t h intelligence and p a i n . " Y z u r ' s pathetic first w o r d s are also his last, as he begs his master for a drink of water. T h e title of M a n u e l D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s first b o o k of short stories, Confidencias de Psiquis, is highly suggestive in terms of the modernist tendency t o w a r d a psychological theme, and indeed, most of the stories in the v o l u m e have to d o w i t h mental aberrations of various sorts, as some of the titles clearly indicate: " C e l o s , " " F e t i q u i s m o , " " T i c , " etc. T h e stories in his second b o o k , Cuentos de color w e r e less psychological and more allegorical and "artistic," in the style of D a r i o ' s Azul . . . In his later narratives, h o w e v e r , D i a z R o d r i g u e z frequently inserted violent and grotesque scenes w h i c h break the superficial harmony of his prose. " E g l o g a de v e r a n o , " for e x a m p l e , a story set in a creole ambience, tells the tale of G u a c h a r a c o , a small-town sheriff w h o obstinately courts Justa, the virtuous wife of the peasant Sandalio. O n e night, as he violently tries to break into Sandalio's house in order to rape Justa, w h o is alone, 86


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G u a c h a r a c o is beheaded by Justa. D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s description of this act is sensationalistic in the extreme, but despite its gruesome character the w h o l e scene has an artificial, contrived atmosphere that is still a modernist trait: " G u a c h a r a c o ' s head, stretched out in the effort to break in w h e n it w a s chopped off, jumped, and perhaps in a last convulsion held on w i t h its teeth to the cot's sheet. It w a s found thus, hanging from the sheet, w h i c h undoubtedly did not slip to the ground from the strange weight of the head because it w a s held tightly on the other side between the cot and the supporting beam of the hut." Lugones's stories in Las fuerzas extranas and D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s later tales, such as " E g l o g a de v e r a n o " and " M i i s i c a b a r b a r a " point t o w a r d the transition between the modernist short story and the more contemporary forms of the genre found in the w o r k s of H o r a c i o Q u i r o g a (1878—1937). Q u i r o g a , w h o began his career as a Modernist, is to the genre of the modernist short story w h a t Julio Herrera y Reissig (1875-1910) is to modernist verse: a writer w h o innovates by collecting and intensifying materials and techniques introduced by previous writers. In Q u i r o g a ' s Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte w e find the modernist preoccu pation with the psyche and personal identity combined w i t h a more "realist" narrative approach and with the rural or wilderness setting preferred by the later telluric narrative of Jose Eustacio Rivera (18881928) and R o m u l o Gallegos (1884-1969). In terms of their themes and allusions, the modernist short stories also reflect their authors' insistent bookishness: numerous modernist short stories take other literary w o r k s as their point of departure - witness D a r i o ' s " L a l a r v a , " w h i c h begins w i t h an evocation of Benvenuto Cellini's Vita (1562) or Lugones's " L a lluvia de f u e g o " (1906), w h i c h is a gloss of the biblical tale of S o d o m and G o m o r r a h . In these and other modernist short stories, the setting is frequently an artificial (specifically, philological) recreation of environments previously encoded in literature - such as the A r c a d i a of G r e e k and R o m a n pastoral poetry, the bohemian w o r l d of students and artists of French R o m a n t i c i s m - or of the Orient. D a r i o ' s w e l l - k n o w n "naturalist" short story, " E l f a r d o , " in Azul... is the exception that proves the rule, since, in the context of the b o o k as a w h o l e it stands out as an essentially literary experiment in the naturalist style, and is as b o o k i s h in its o w n w a y as " E l velo de la Reina M a b . " Partly because of their extreme subjectivism and concern w i t h subjecti vity, the modernist short-story writers tended to avoid the realist aesthetic in favor of broad stylistic experimentation and a lyrical tone. Unlike their approach to poetry, h o w e v e r , the Modernists did not attempt to formu late a poetics of the short story; nevertheless, their stories clearly s h o w the coherent and beneficial impact modernist writing had on the Hispanic short-story tradition. D u e to the Modernists, the language of the Hispanic 87



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short story became more polished, precise, and nuanced, its subjects became more varied, and narrative intensity w a s emphasized. A greater degree of creative self-consciousness also began to emerge. Indeed, the modernist experiments in narrative point of view, tone, and use of symbolic elements in the development of the plot, were contributions adopted even by later Spanish A m e r i c a n narrators w h o w r o t e in the realist vein. Furthermore, echoes of the M o d e r n i s t s ' interest in "the fantastic" and in b o o k i s h and erudite themes for their short stories may be discerned in the narrative of later Spanish A m e r i c a n writers like Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Carpentier, C a r l o s Fuentes (b. 1928), and Julio C o r t á z a r (1916-1964). T h e modernist essay, like the short story, is also intimately connected to the chronicle. M a n y so-called chronicles of M a r t í , Gutiérrez Nájera, and G ó m e z C a r r i l l o , can in fact be considered essays. Indeed, if the boundary between the modernist chronicle and the short story often appears blurred, this is even more evident in the essay. Like the chronicle, the essay is an expository prose text that makes occasional use of narration and frequently utilizes poetic and rhetorical devices to present its message. Often the essay, like the chronicle, takes current events as its point of departure. Length is not an important distinguishing factor between both genres, since it could be argued that book-length essays such as R o d ó ' s Ariel (of w h i c h more will be said shortly) are actually collections of shorter texts united by a c o m m o n thread of argument, and there are also book-length chronicles: D a r í o ' s El viaje a Nicaragua immediately springs to mind, along w i t h many of G ó m e z Carrillo's travel chronicles. O n e important distinction between the t w o genres lies in their tone. Generally, the tone of the chronicle is frivolous, superficial, or sensationalistic; description prevails over analysis, and ideas are subordi nated to events and things. M a r t i ' s w o r k , w h i c h could be cited as an exception, actually proves the rule, since w h a t stands out in most of the C u b a n patriot's chronicles is his constant struggle to undermine the superficiality and sensationalism demanded of him as a chronicler by his editors (as m a y be seen in his correspondence with Bartolomé M i t r e y V e d i a , editor of the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nation). T h i s conflict is particularly evident in M a r t i ' s artistic and literary chronicles (as defined by the t y p o l o g y proposed above). In these, he had both to entertain and to enlighten his readers, and the subject matter new or u n k n o w n authors and artists, art exhibits, b o o k reviews naturally led him t o w a r d the essay form. W h i l e their introductory nature gives them the status of " n e w s , " w h a t makes these texts essayistic is not only their literary or cultural subject matter but also the meditative tone in w h i c h they are cast and their abundant digressions, in w h i c h M a r t i 88 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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reflects on more general social, cultural, or even philosophical questions. A m o n g these chronicles are various highly influential texts M a r t i w r o t e to introduce and c o m m e n t to his Spanish A m e r i c a n readers the w o r k s of English-speaking authors such as W a l t W h i t m a n , R a l p h W a l d o Emerson, O s c a r W i l d e , Charles D a r w i n , and others. M u c h of w h a t w a s stated about the style of M a r t i ' s reportorial chronicles can also be said of his essays. T h e main qualities of M a r t i ' s oratory - sententiousness and use of vivid images - predominate in them, sometimes threatening to o v e r s h a d o w his ideas. Nevertheless, these texts convey an impression of intellectual depth combined w i t h a highly effective, if s o m e w h a t baroque, use of language. Conversely, if his essays are oratorical, many of M a r t i ' s numerous speeches can also be classified as essayistic, despite their abundant rhetorical flourishes. T h i s is the case with his Steck Hall speech of 1880, and his speeches on José M a r í a de Heredia (1803-1839) in 1889 and on Simón Bolívar (1783—1830) in 1893, as well as w i t h his very famous and highly oratorical text (which w a s never delivered as a speech), " N u e s t r a A m é r i c a " (1891) ["Our A m e r i c a . " ] . A n o t h e r important oratorical-essayistic text by M a r t i , a m o n g many that could be cited, is his 1882 prologue to Poema del Niágara (1880) by Juan A n t o n i o Pérez Bonalde (1846-1892). O n this prologue M a r t i , a l w a y s the perfectionist, later commented with regret that it w a s like " n e w w i n e , " too rich w i t h ideas that had not fully matured. Nevertheless, this is clearly one of the most remarkable of the many extraordinary essays M a r t i w r o t e . " E l Poema del Niágara" is outstanding because in it M a r t i offers a vivid (if rather rhapsodic) synthesis of the changes w r o u g h t in Spanish A m e r i c a n literature and culture by the arrival of modernity. W h a t first strikes the reader of this essay, h o w e v e r , is its tone, akin to that of a manifesto; " E l Poema del Niágara" is one of M a r t i ' s most sustained attempts at outlining a poetics for M o d e r n i s m . It is not a poetics concerned with technicalities of verse and form, h o w e v e r , but with the philosophical basis for a new literature. In his comments on Pérez Bonalde's p o e m (which is not a particularly memorable or modernist w o r k itself), M a r t i seeks to c o m e to terms w i t h his romantic b a c k g r o u n d and w i t h the ideas of turn-of-the-century Decadentism. M a r t i ' s Romanticism is by no means a residue of the early and rather w e a k Hispanic Romanticism of Heredia, G u s t a v o A d o l f o Bécquer, or José Z o r r i l l a (although M a r t i k n e w and admired some of their w o r k s ) , but rather the product of his belated and marginal confron tation w i t h the more powerful A n g l o - G e r m a n i c R o m a n t i c i s m of W i l l i a m W o r d s w o r t h , Johann W o l f g a n g v o n G o e t h e , and Samuel T a y l o r C o l e r idge. M a r t i , as a C u b a n writer from the latter half of the nineteenth century, deliberately studied the earlier A n g l o - G e r m a n i c Romanticism because he k n e w that its ideas had only reached A m e r i c a through their 89 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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dilute French and Spanish adaptations. M a r t i ' s interest in R o m a n t i c i s m does not spring from the nostalgia of a latecomer, h o w e v e r , but from his eclectic search for elements w i t h w h i c h to lay the foundations of a solid Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. A n o t h e r reason for M a r t i ' s sympathetic appreciation of R o m a n t i c i s m is his o w n political agenda: C u b a ' s independence w a s to be the culmina tion of Spanish A m e r i c a ' s W a r s of Independence earlier in the century, w h i c h had been highly romantic enterprises themselves at both the practical and ideological levels. O n the other hand, M a r t i wished to maintain a critical distance, both for political and literary reasons, from French Decadentism, w h i c h w a s the literary modality then in vogue: as a political leader, he could hardly believe in " d e c a d e n c e " while preparing a revolution, and as a writer, M a r t i (like Nietzsche, w h o s e w o r k s he probably did not read) viewed decadentism as excessively "effeminate" (he referred to the " d e c a d e n t " writers as " h e m b r a s debiles") and lifedenying, and considered it unsuitable to form the basis for the n e w A m e r i c a n literature he w a n t e d to create. " E l Poema del Niagara" appears, therefore, as a rather bizarre mixture of romantic topics and diatribes against Decadentism, written in M a r t i ' s highly oratorical and image-laden style (which did not escape contamina tion from Decadentism), leavened w i t h M a r t i ' s o w n perceptive obser vations (gleaned from his experience of life in N e w Y o r k ) about modernity's impact on the life of the mind. M a r t i ' s emphasis is on speed, change and uncertainty: " N o one can today be certain of his faith," he states, " W e w a k e up w i t h one problem and g o to bed w i t h another. Images devour each other in our minds. T h e r e is no time to give shape to our t h o u g h t s . " In a visionary passage that Cintio Vitier (b. 1921), in " M a r t i futuro," has c o m p a r e d with texts by the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo, M a r t i declares of the n e w poets: " T h e y have all been kissed by the same sorceress. In all of them boils the n e w b l o o d . T h o u g h they m a y tear their entrails to pieces, in a quiet corner there still lurk, angry and hungry, Unrest, Uncertainty, a V a g u e H o p e , and a Secret Vision. A n immense pale man of haggard countenance, tearful eyes, and dry m o u t h , dressed in black, w a l k s with grave steps, w i t h o u t rest or sleep, over the w h o l e earth, and has sat in front of all the fireplaces, and placed his trembling hand at the head of every table!" M a r t i sees the birth of the new writers and intellectuals as an agonistic process; writers must discard old habits (such as, for instance, the s l o w , methodic accumulation of k n o w l e d g e in an atmosphere of peaceful meditation) and must become accustomed instead to w o r k i n g in a more mundane ambience, suffering the continuous and often rending friction of everyday life, and facing an ever-increasing mass of unrefined infor mation. " E l Poema del Niagara" is a b o v e all a diagnosis of the crisis of 90 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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the turn-of-the-century writers in Europe as well as Spanish A m e r i c a . Despite its manifesto-like style, it makes few concrete proposals about h o w the future Spanish A m e r i c a n literature should be, save that it should not fall into the trap of Decadentism and should not abandon the metaphysical, transcendentalist search for unity and h a r m o n y in the cosmos that w a s , in M a r t i ' s view, the R o m a n t i c s ' greatest legacy. Needless to say, although many chronicles by M a r t í , Gutiérrez Nájera, D a r í o , and G ó m e z Carrillo, a m o n g others, can be considered essays, other modernist prose writers and poets also w r o t e essays tout court, although they are less remembered for this: such is the case of the U r u g u a y a n novelist C a r l o s Reyles (1868-1938) w i t h his Nietzschean essays in La muerte del cisne, or of Lugones's explorations of Argentinian history in La guerra gaucha. Nevertheless modernism also produced several writers devoted almost exclusively to the essay as a genre w h o attempted to distinguish their essays clearly from the ubiquitous chronicles. Foremost a m o n g these is the U r u g u a y a n José Enrique R o d ó , f o l l o w e d by other lessremembered authors, such as the Peruvian M a n u e l G o n z á l e z Prada (1848-1918), and the C o l o m b i a n s C a r l o s A r t u r o T o r r e s ( 1 8 6 7 - 1 9 1 1 ) and B a l d o m e r o Sanín C a n o ( 1 8 6 1 - 1 9 5 7 ) . T h o u g h it is true that all the major Modernists were acquainted to a greater or lesser degree w i t h philology as a discipline, either in the form of literary criticism or of grammatical and lexicographical studies, the only major M o d e r n i s t w h o can be considered a professional philologist is R o d ó . Despite his many incursions into U r u g u a y a n politics, R o d ó ' s most constant occupation w a s w h a t today w o u l d be termed "cultural critic i s m " (criticism of values and ideologies), and literary criticism. R o d ó ' s allegiance to philology as a discipline, combined w i t h his political and moral preoccupations, led him to prefer the essay over narrative fiction or journalism. A l t h o u g h he did write some chronicles (collected posthumously in El camino de Varos), a large portion of his w o r k consists of critical essays written in a solemn style and measured tone meant to highlight the profundity of his ideas. His t w o most outstanding b o o k s of essays are Motivos de Troteo - w h i c h synthesizes R o d ó ' s "ethics of b e c o m i n g , " according to Pedro Henríquez Ureña (1884-1946) - and the w e l l - k n o w n and highly influential Ariel. Like M a r t i ' s essays, Ariel o w e s much of its rhetoric and structure to the oratorical tradition. T h e b o o k is in fact presented, in the framing tale that serves as prologue and epilogue, as a long valedictory speech given by an " o l d and revered teacher," nicknamed " P r ó s p e r o " by his students because he habitually gave his lectures sitting next to a statue of the character Ariel from Shakespeare's The Tempest ( 1 6 1 1 ) . Originally published as an integral w o r k , Ariel may be divided into six sections, besides the prologue and the epilogue. T h e s e divisions were suggested by 91 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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R o d ó himself after the publication of Ariel, w h e n he w r o t e a summary of the b o o k ' s content at the request of a friend. Sections i to 4 deal w i t h such classic turn-of-the-century topics as the cult of y o u t h , or the appeal to y o u t h as a force for cultural and social innovation; the need for an organic cultural development; the conflict between the self and the outside w o r l d ; the concept of Beauty in culture; the relationship between beauty and morality; the rise of utilitarianism; the relationship between utilitarianism and d e m o c r a c y , and the need for a redefinition of d e m o c r a c y that will avoid confusion w i t h "the rule of mediocrity" (to use R o d ó ' s phrase). A s an illustration of this issue of utilitarianism and d e m o c r a c y , sections 5 and 6 offer a detailed - if, on occasion, factually inaccurate - critique of the civilization of the United States. T h e crisis of 1898 brought about by the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r made these comments on the United States particularly opportune, and they are partially responsible for the b o o k ' s popularity as well as for the controversial reputation it has retained to this day. In Ariel, R o d ó tried to outline a p r o g r a m of action for the Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals of his generation. Ariel's enormous impact on its Spanish A m e r i c a n readership w a s due not only to the ideas it expressed, but also to its programmatic, manifesto-like quality, and to its oratorical rhetoric. T h e r e are various styles of oratory, as is well k n o w n , and that of Próspero in Ariel is one of measured and rational exhortation, unlike M a r t i ' s more fiery and poetic style. So balanced and polished is R o d ó ' s style in Ariel, that it is easy to forget that its author w a s only twenty-nine years old w h e n the b o o k w a s published. D o n n i n g the mask of Próspero, R o d ó manages to sound like a wise old sage communicating an ancient and unquestionable w i s d o m . It should also be noted that R o d ó made certain that his w o r k w a s read and commented by nearly all the major Hispanic intellectuals of his day, from Juan Valera and M i g u e l de U n a m u n o in Spain, to the y o u n g Pedro Henríquez Ureña and Alfonso Reyes (1889-19^9) M e x i c o . R o d ó sent copies of his b o o k to all of them and w r o t e asking for their opinion of his w o r k . T h r o u g h the years, Ariel has inspired a long lineage of essays that echo its arguments or reply to them, from La creación de un continente (1912) by Francisco G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n (1880-1953), through Alfonso Reyes's Ultima Tule (1941) to Caliban. Apuntes sobre la cultura en nuestra América (1972) by R o b e r t o Fernández R e t a m a r (b. 1930). If Ariel in R o d ó ' s text is a figure of the purity and perfection to w h i c h the modernist artists and intellectuals aspired, in his second major w o r k , Motivos de Proteo, R o d ó ' s tutelary deity is very different and in some w a y s more problematic. Proteus, the variously shaped keeper of N e p tune's flocks in G r e c o - R o m a n myth, as already mentioned w i t h regard to Gutiérrez Nájera, w a s an ambiguous s y m b o l of magic and p o w e r but also m


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of instability and change. R o d ó ' s Proteus is, to a large extent, the "civic P r o t e u s " of the Renaissance, as seen in the w o r k s of Pico della M i r á n d o l a and Juan Luis Vives: a figure for the harmonious resolution of multiplicity into unity, as well as a s y m b o l of the multifarious nature of humanistic inquiry. In this sense, Proteus symbolizes for R o d ó philology itself, because of p h i l o l o g y ' s w o n d r o u s capacity to imitate its object of inquiry and resurrect b y g o n e eras. It should also be remembered that Ariel, in R o d ó ' s text, appears not as Shakespeare's "airy spirite," but as the statue w h i c h adorns Próspero's study; by adopting Proteus as a s y m b o l , R o d ó is clearly seeking a less stiff and one-dimensional emblem for his "ethics of b e c o m i n g . " H o w e v e r , the " n u m e n del m a r " (as R o d ó calls him) is also a sign that stands for the instability and mutability of h u m a n nature through time. T h i s deep sense of time's flow is one of the most striking differences between Motivos de Proteo and R o d ó ' s earlier essays, w h i c h tended t o w a r d an o n t o l o g y based on stony permanence. " T i m e is the supreme i n n o v a t o r , " R o d ó declares, and later he states: " W e persist only in the continuity of our modifica tions; in the more or less regular order that controls them; in the force that thrusts us f o r w a r d t o w a r d s the most mysterious and transcendent transformation of all. . . W e are the ship's w a k e , w h o s e material essence does not remain the same for t w o successive instants because it dies and is reborn unceasingly from the w a v e s ; the w a k e that is not a persistent reality but a m o v i n g shape, a sequence of rythmic impulses that act u p o n a constantly renewed o b j e c t . " T h e problem w i t h w h i c h R o d ó grapples in Motivos de Proteo is h o w the self can survive in a changing w o r l d , in the midst of circumstances w h i c h constantly threaten its integrity. If change is inevitable, and " c o n v e r s i o n " is the " n o r m a l " state of h u m a n existence, h o w can the self control change, and control itself? F r o m a more literary standpoint, h o w can a writing based on the primacy of the self survive in an age of constant flux and transition? It is the recognition of this dilemma (not the solutions he offers, however) that m a k e R o d ó a truly modern writer. A Peruvian precursor of M o d e r n i s m , M a n u e l G o n z á l e z Prada enun ciated in 1886, fourteen years before R o d ó ' s appeal to y o u t h in Ariel, a similar creed w h i c h he summed up in the slogan: " L o s viejos a la tumba; los jóvenes a la o b r a " ["The old ones to the grave; the y o u n g ones to their w o r k " ] . G o n z á l e z Prada w a s , h o w e v e r , a very different sort of essayist to R o d ó . A caustic freethinker w i t h anarchistic leanings, G o n z á l e z Prada w a s a polemicist w h o collected many of his intensely critical essays and (inevitably) speeches in b o o k s w i t h such characteristic titles as Páginas libres, Horas de lucha, and the posthumous El tonel de Diógenes (1945). G o n z á l e z Prada is also remembered as one of the first Peruvian intellec tuals to call attention to the plight of the Indians. H o w e v e r , one of his 93


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most interesting essays from a literary-historical perspective is "Junto a R e n a n " (1894), w h i c h G o n z á l e z Prada narrates his personal acquaintance w i t h the French philologist (he attended Renan's courses in Oriental Philology at the Collège de France) and attests to the strong influence of philology on modernist writing. Closer to R o d ó in age and inclinations w a s the C o l o m b i a n C a r l o s A r t u r o T o r r e s , w h o s e b o o k Idola fori. Ensayo sobre las supersticiones políticas appeared w i t h a laudatory prologue from R o d ó himself. T o r r e s w a s an anglophile w h o had earlier published a series of essays on English literature entitled Estudios ingleses (1907). F o l l o w i n g Sir Francis B a c o n ' s incipient theory of ideologies in his Novum Organum (1620), T o r r e s w r o t e w h a t is essentially the first serious study of the role of ideology in Spanish A m e r i c a n culture and politics. Curiously, for a critic of ideology T o r r e s w a s rather dogmatic himself, and this is reflected in the highly assertive but colorless style of his b o o k . A n o t h e r C o l o m b i a n essayist, B a l d o m e r o Sanín C a n o , though ten years his senior, w a s a kindred spirit to R o d ó . Like the U r u g u a y a n , Sanín C a n o w a s primarily a literary and cultural critic. H e had read more widely than R o d ó himself, and possessed broad k n o w l e d g e of G e r m a n and Italian literature. His acquaintance with English literature w a s particularly intimate, since, like Andrés Bello ( 1 7 8 1 - 1 8 6 5 ) , he lived for many years in England. Sanín C a n o ' s w o r k , h o w e v e r , never coalesced into a single memorable b o o k , and remained disseminated in journals and newspapers until the mid-i920s, w h e n his concise and elegantly written essays began to be collected in b o o k s such as La civilización manual y otros ensayos and Indagaciones e imágenes. m

A s w e have seen, the Modernists used their chronicles as a sort of "literary s c r a p b o o k " or w o r k s h o p and as a means of informing each other about the latest literary fashions. T h e i r short stories were vehicles for exploring narrative style and the role of subjectivity in fiction writing, while their essays served to reflect on politics, literature, and culture, and to inspire their readers to political commitment in the face of events such as the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r of 1898 and the taking of the Isthmus of Panama by the United States in 1903. Similarly, the genre of the modernist novel also had its particular raison d'etre, a b o v e and b e y o n d the M o d e r n i s t s ' desire to experiment and innovate in all the literary genres. Like the other modernist prose genres, the modernist novel has suffered from a lack of serious critical scrutiny. T o a specialist this statement might seem unlikely, since in fact some modernist novels have inspired important w o r k s of literary criticism in Spanish, such as A m a d o A l o n s o ' s Ensayo sobre la novela histórica. El modernismo en "La gloria de don Ramiro." Other notable critics and literary historians, such as Enrique A n d e r s o n 94


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Imbert (b. 1910) and Fernando Alegría (b. 1918), have devoted essays to specific modernist novels (Martí's Lucia Jerez [Amistad funesta] for example) and have included modernist novels in their histories of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature and of the novel in Spanish A m e r i c a . Y e t , on the w h o l e , critical studies that take these texts seriously as novels have been lacking. It is typical of most of the early criticism on the modernist novel to v i e w these w o r k s as frivolous and unsubstantial, and to consider them chiefly as examples of the M o d e r n i s t s ' supposedly excessive concern w i t h style. Scant attention has been paid to the overall formal achievements of the modernist novel as well as to its ideological content. T h i s relative disdain of the modernist novel has been due in part, first, to the absence of a critically sophisticated and broadly accepted theory of modernist writing, and second, to the ideological prejudices of postmodernist critics, w h o s e concept of the novel w a s biased in favor of the neorealistic telluric narratives (such as R ó m u l o G a l l e g o s ' s Doña Bárbara) w h i c h arose after the decline of the modernist novels and greatly surpassed them in popularity. In recent years, h o w e v e r , the renewed interest in the study of modernist prose as a w h o l e has given n e w impetus to the study of the modernist novel. W h a t at first strikes the student of the modernist novel is the abundance of w o r k s included by literary historians and critics in its canon. A cursory survey of the literary histories of Alegría, A n d e r s o n Imbert, A r t u r o Uslar Pietri (b. 1906), Luis A l b e r t o Sánchez (b. 1900), and M a x Henriquez Ureña, produces a list of some forty modernist novels, from M a r t í ' s pathbreaking Lucia Jerez to C a r l o s Reyles's El embrujo de Sevilla [Castanets]. A m o n g those that have received serious critical attention over the years are the previously mentioned novels by M a r t i and Reyles, José A s u n c i ó n Suva's De sobremesa (1896), A m a d o N e r v o ' s El bachiller, R u b é n D a r í o ' s unfinished El hombre de oro (1897), M a n u e l D í a z R o d r i guez's ídolos rotos and Sangre patricia, El triunfo del ideal (1901) and Dyonisios (1904) by Pedro César D o m í n i c i (1872-1954), La gloria de don Ramiro [The Glory of Don Ramiro] by Enrique Larreta ( 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 6 1 ) , and Alsino by Pedro Prado (1886-1951). T h i s plethora of w o r k s in the canon is surprising in the light of the critics' general disdain for them, but not in terms of the literary history of the period in Spanish A m e r i c a , since, as M a x Henriquez Ureña reminds us, "after the 1880s, novelistic production increases in quantity and i m p o r t a n c e . " T h e modernist novels were, quite simply, important c o m ponents of a broad novelistic " b o o m " that occurred in Spanish A m e r i c a around the turn of the century, in w h i c h numerous novels in other modalities, such as Criollismo [Creolism] and Naturalismo [Naturalism], were also written and published. T h e rise, development, and decline of the Spanish A m e r i c a n modernist 95


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novel takes place within a period of approximately forty years, between the last t w o decades of the nineteenth century and the first t w o of the twentieth. Nevertheless, the temporal distribution of w o r k s during this period is not uniform: during the first fourteen years of the genre, from 1885 to 1899, l y eight important modernist novels were published, while in the following fifteen years, from 1900 to 1 9 1 5 , there were twenty. (The geographic distribution of these w o r k s is more uniform - at least in terms of their authors' country of origin: they were produced in the Southern C o n e as well as in the Antilles, M e x i c o , and Central America.) T h e increase in the production of modernist novels around the turn of the century p r o b a b l y occurred because M o d e r n i s m w a s then at the apogee of its diffusion, but also because of extraliterary events such as the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r of 1898, w h i c h , as w e shall see, also had an impact on the modernist novelists. W h a t are the distinguishing characteristics of the modernist novel compared, for example, to the naturalista [naturalist], criollista [creóle] or decadent novels of the same period? A t the level of their writing, oi course, the modernist novels all share a series of traits that are typically modernist: firstly, the use of the so-called "artistic p r o s e " of the M o d e r nists. Despite variations in style, all modernist novels were written following the principles of "artistic p r o s e " as exemplified in the chronicles and essays of the major Modernists, or as later codified by Enrique G ó m e z Carrillo in his 1919 essay. " E l arte de trabajar la p r o s a " {El primer libro de las crónicas). T h e notion of "artistic p r o s e " is essentially an o u t g r o w t h of the philological idea that language is an object, with a history and a concreteness of its o w n , and that individual w o r d s can be manipulated as " c o l l e c t a b l e s , " purely for their aesthetic value, w i t h o u t being totally subordinated to their signifying function. "Artistic p r o s e " w a s a l w a y s harmonious, sensuous, meticulously descriptive, full of eye-catching phrases, and w a s supposed to possess perennial value. T h e Modernists frequently used terms such as " s o l i d , " " p o l i s h e d , " " p u r e , " and "marble l i k e " ("marmóreo") to refer to this form of writing, w h i c h , though brilliant at its best, could often become exceedingly hieratic and lifeless. It should be remembered, h o w e v e r , that this writing w a s considered highly experimental at the time, and that the later avant-garde writing, w i t h its " g r e g u e r í a s " and "jitanjáforas" ["nonsense rhymes"] w a s mostly an intensification of "artistic p r o s e " principles. o n

A l s o important to modernist writing were a series of recurrent topics c o m m o n to all Modernists: the interior, the museum, the library, the femme fatale, the dandy, and the sense of spleen, a m o n g others. H o w e v e r , at a more ideological level, there are other traits w h i c h help to distinguish the modernist novel from the naturalist or creolist w o r k s (more will be said about Decadentism shortly). T h e first, and most general, is the 96 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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modernist novel's profoundly antipositivistic, critical stance. A s men tioned earlier, modernist writing arises from a critical, philological awareness of language's artificiality; the modernist novel extends that critical approach to the ideological framework that sustains both the naturalist and creóle novels. Even as they incorporate characters, themes, and topics derived from Naturalism, the modernist novels question Naturalism's attempt to explain, by means of scientific models, a reality that seems to be ever more changeable and chaotic. T h i s is not to suggest that the modernist novelists rejected outright the sociopolitical thrust of naturalist fiction; indeed, that w a s an aspect of Naturalism in w h i c h the Modernists were deeply interested. H o w e v e r , the Modernists clearly approached the w h o l e question of the relation between their literary w o r k and its social context w i t h cautious skepticism. T h e cosmopolitan and urban thematic of most modernist novels is also in part an o u t g r o w t h of this skeptical attitude, w h i c h led them to distrust the facile idealization of the countryside typical of most creolist fiction. It may be thought that the modernist novels are essentially a Spanish A m e r i c a n variant of the European " d e c a d e n t " novels in the m o l d of J. K . H u y s m a n s ' s Á rebours. In fact, although " d e c a d e n c e " - sociopolitical, cultural, or moral - and "art for art's s a k e " were recurrent topics in the modernist novels, the M o d e r n i s t s ' Decadentism w a s a l w a y s highly ironic and self-conscious. W e must recall that Decadentism w a s in a large part stimulated by nineteenth-century physics' idea of entropy and its exten sion to history and society as a sort of " s o c i a l t h e r m o d y n a m i c s " : it w a s believed that just as all systems tend to m o v e in the direction of increasing disorder, each society's " p r o g r e s s " must reach a peak and give w a y to an inevitable decline. H o w e v e r , even the most t h o r o u g h g o i n g Decadentists a m o n g the Spanish A m e r i c a n Modernists, such as José A s u n c i ó n Silva and Julián del C a s a l , realized that their attitude had little correspondence w i t h their Spanish A m e r i c a n sociohistorical milieu. T h e y were well a w a r e that from a European point of view, A m e r i c a — both N o r t h and South w a s still the paradigm of a r a w n e w society full of untapped energy. T h i s awareness is reflected in the M o d e r n i s t s ' novels, and thus makes their " D e c a d e n t i s m " rather suspect. For e x a m p l e , José Fernández, the prota gonist of Suva's Dé sobremesa, although fascinated by the turn-of-thecentury decadent art and lifestyle, nevertheless possessed, w e are told, " a n athlete's p h y s i q u e , " unlike his model, the w e a k l i n g D e s Esseintes from Á rebours. Fernández w a s in fact a hyperactive rastaquouére, one of those wealthy South Americans w h o tried to buy their w a y into the higher levels of turn-of-the-century French society. A consideration of the protagonist in the modernist novel leads us to another important characteristic w h i c h helps to define the genre: in nearly all modernist novels w e find the figure of the artist-hero (poet, painter, 97



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musician, or sculptor) w h o tries desperately to define his position and his role within the new Spanish A m e r i c a n society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. T h e Modernists clearly were not trying simply to imitate decadentist fiction, but were also attempting to g o beyond the naturalist and decadentist approach to society and history. T h e y sought a "third w a y , " so to speak, w h i c h w o u l d help them avoid the hypercritical, ivory-tower attitude of the Decadentists as well as the naturalists' n a r r o w dogmatism that subordinated literature to scientific models and ideologi cal considerations. Indeed, once the modernist novels are subjected to an unprejudiced reading, it becomes evident that far from being frivolous, superficial, or escapist, they were in fact writings in w h i c h the Modernists " w o r k e d - t h r o u g h " (to b o r r o w a Freudian term) not only their personal problems and aesthetic theories but some of the most urgent issues of their day. If the modernist novel as a genre seems vague and ill-defined, it is simply because it is the record of a profound and sustained search for selfdefinition by the Modernists, not only on an aesthetic or cultural level, but also on a political plane. C o n v e r s i o n , as said before, is one of the major topics of late M o d e r n ism, and the modernist novels concern themselves w i t h h o w the sociopoli tical and cultural changes in turn-of-the-century Spanish A m e r i c a forced writers to change from being pure practitioners of their art into intellec tuals in the full modern sense of the term, that is to say: artists, scholars, or scientists w h o strategically and publicly address issues of political and social import beyond the n a r r o w confines of their disciplines. M o s t of the major modernist novels m a y be read as allegories about the conversion of Spanish A m e r i c a n writers into intellectuals. In fact, the w o r d "intellec t u a l , " w h i c h in the romance languages w a s first used as a noun during the notorious Dreyfus affair of the 1890s in France, first appeared in Spanish in 1901 in the modernist novel ídolos rotos by M a n u e l D í a z R o d r i g u e z . A few years later, the U r u g u a y a n thinker C a r l o s V a z Ferreira (1873—1958) w o u l d write a b o o k entitled Moral para intelectuales (1909). But already in 1900 R o d ó had begun to analyze, and indeed to urge, the Spanish A m e r i c a n writers' conversion into intellectuals in his essay Ariel, though w i t h o u t using the term "intellectual." A n often explicit dialogue w i t h R o d ó can be observed in many of the major modernist novels of the 1900s, although the issue of the writers' conversion into intellectuals w a s already being addressed in the very earliest modernist novels, such as José M a r t i ' s Lucia Jerez and José A s u n c i ó n Suva's De sobremesa. In Lucia Jerez, M a r t i describes the male protagonist, the l a w y e r Juan Jerez, in terms reminiscent of the French writer Julien Benda's description of the clerc in his w e l l - k n o w n essay about French intellectuals, La trahison des clercs (1927). A c c o r d i n g to M a r t í , Juan Jerez " b e l o n g e d to that select breed of men that does not w o r k for success but against it. N e v e r . . . did 98


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Juan compromise one bit in that w h i c h he considered sacred in itself, w h i c h w a s his manly judgement and his duty not to use it lightly or in the service of unjust persons or ideas. Rather, Juan saw his intelligence like a priestly investiture, w h i c h must be kept in such a w a y that the believers will not see in it the least stain; and Juan felt. . . like a priest to all men, to w h i c h one by one he had to perpetually give account, as if they were his masters, of the g o o d use of his investiture." T h e nascent Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals, as represented by Juan Jerez, appear in Lucia Jerez infused w i t h "the nostalgia of a c t i o n " (in M a r t i ' s perceptive phrase), anxious to participate effectively in the social and political life of their country, yet unable to d o so because of their immaturity and inexperience in the strategies of p o w e r and writing that all intellectuals must k n o w . Furthermore, in his novel M a r t i portrays the Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals as individuals stifled by violent sentimental and political passions that d o not a l l o w them to b e c o m e conscious of their destiny. T h e novel's plot centers around the relationship between Juan Jerez, his fiancee ( w h o is also his cousin) Lucia Jerez, and their friend Sol del Valle. Lucia is engaged to be married to Juan, but their relationship is clouded from the beginning by L u c i a ' s intense and unmotivated jealousy, w h i c h leads her to reproach Juan for his slightest delay and his lack of attention (real or perceived) t o w a r d her. Lucia professes for Juan an aggressive adoration that borders on insanity; for his part, Juan is more passive, and his love for Lucia frequently takes second place to the ethical and political duties that he, as a l a w y e r devoted to helping the p o o r , has imposed on himself. T h e course of this already tense relationship is interrupted - at least as far as Lucia is concerned - by the arrival of the beautiful and innocent Sol del Valle (to w h o m M a r t i refers in the first chapter as " L e o n o r del V a l l e " ; as will be seen later, this onomastic ambiguity is significant). L e o n o r / S o l w a s one of the five daughters of the Spaniard D o n M a n u e l del V a l l e . By the time the action in the novel takes place, Sol's father had already died; her extraordinary beauty had a l l o w e d her to enter the y o u n g ladies school of the city, and had a l l o w e d her access to the city's upper class, to w h i c h Lucia and Juan belong. Juan k n e w Sol from the days w h e n he bought a d r a w i n g by G o y a that w a s part of her patrimony as a w a y to help her mother, D o ñ a A n d r e a , solve the crisis in w h i c h D o n M a n u e l ' s death had left the family finances. A l t h o u g h it is clear in the text that Juan, like everyone else in the city, admires the beauty of Sol del Valle, he never s h o w s romantic interest in her. Nevertheless, w h e n Lucia learns that Juan is helping Sol's mother in some legal matters, and seeing Sol's graduation from the school and her successful entry into the city's social life, she begins to fear that Juan might fall in love w i t h Sol, and begins to feel an illconcealed hatred t o w a r d Sol. 99



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Lucia's jealousy becomes more intense during the concert given by the pianist Keleffy, w h e n the director of the y o u n g ladies' school introduced Sol to Lucia so that Lucia will become her friend and counselor. T o r t u r e d and delighted at the same time by Sol's nearness and by the confidence she s h o w s in her, Lucia engages in feverish efforts to ensure that Sol does not become interested in Juan Jerez. A t the same time the angelically innocent Sol, w i t h o u t realizing L u c i a ' s thoughts, resists Lucia's attempts to manipulate her. T h e crisis is reached w h e n Sol and L u c i a , along w i t h her t w o sisters and the foppish Pedro R e a l , travel to a house in the country where Juan will join them later to be w i t h their friend, the painter A n a , w h o m the doctor has sent there to alleviate her tuberculosis. In the isolated and restricted environment of the country house L u c i a ' s jealousy finally bursts into the open, despite the mediating efforts of the sickly A n a . In the midst of a party to cheer up A n a , Lucia grabs one of the revolvers brought by the male guests and, to the astonishment of Juan Jerez and the other witnesses, murders Sol by shooting her through the chest. A s is well k n o w n , M a r t i w r o t e this novel as a favor to his friend Adelaida Baralt, w h o had been asked to write a serialized romance novel for the N e w Y o r k journal El Latino-Americano. It w a s published w i t h the appropriately journalistic title Amistad funesta under the p s e u d o n y m " A d e l a i d a R a l , " and M a r t i and M r s . Baralt split the royalties. A l t h o u g h M a r t i undertook this task mainly for chivalrous as well as financial reasons (he needed money for the cause of C u b a n independence), he w a s as a l w a y s incapable of producing mere hack w o r k , and his novel is richly e n d o w e d w i t h layers of symbolism and interpretation. Lucia Jerez contains a critical subtext w h i c h encodes a c o m p l e x allegorical medi tation about the role of metaphor in modernist writing. F o l l o w i n g a male-oriented tradition visible in such diverse nineteenthcentury w o r k s as H u y s m a n s ' s Á rebours, Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and Sigmund Freud's Studies on Hysteria (1893-1895), M a r t i uses female characters as emblems linked to writing and representation. In Lucia Jerez, the characters of Lucia and Sol are allegories of t w o divergent notions of metaphor: S o l / L e o n o r embodies the traditional concept of metaphor as a spontaneous emanation of N a t u r e , as a transparency that does not displace N a t u r e but rather clarifies it and a l l o w s meaning to illuminate the mind. Lucia (whose very name evokes the imperfect tense of the verb " l u c i r " ["to appear"]) represents the opposing v i e w of metaphor as a play of appearances and as an artificial construct, an " i m p r o p e r " or forced conjugation of very different terms that obstruct meaning by calling attention to themselves rather than to the object to w h i c h they refer. T h e ambiguity of S o l / L e o n o r ' s name is significant in this context because it indicates M a r t i ' s doubts about whether there could in fact be a 100 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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" n a t u r a l " metaphor; the name Sol is clearly associated w i t h the " n a t u r a l " view of metaphor, but L e o n o r , the name M a r t i uses for this character in the first chapter of the novel (which he never had an opportunity to revise), points, like " L u c i a , " to the artificiality of metaphor: " L e o n o r " is a Spanish version (through the Provencal derivation " E l i n o r " ) of the G r e e k name " H e l e n , " w h i c h means " t o r c h . " A torch is clearly an artificial substitute for the natural light of the sun; by using the name " L e o n o r , " M a r t i indicates that there is a basic identity between both w o m e n and between both notions of metaphor. T h e " p r o p r i e t y " or appropriateness of metaphors cannot be determined by a priori rules, M a r t i suggests, but rather must be judged by the taste and conventions of a given historical period. Questions of value and judgment are at stake here, and in this context Juan Jerez's role becomes clear; as the emblem of justice in the novel, Juan is called upon to decide w h i c h form of metaphor is more " a p p r o p r i a t e . " T h e fact that circumstances have reached a point of crisis - symbolized in L u c i a ' s murder of Sol, in the " v i c t o r y " of artifice over nature - only underscores the urgency of a judgment w h i c h Juan is unable to render at the novel's end. T h i s sophisticated theoretical discussion about metaphor is linked to the dilemma of the intellectual in t w o w a y s . First, it is clearly important for an intellectual to explore the rhetorical and stylistic techniques w i t h w h i c h to represent his ideas. Second, Juan Jerez's dilemma m a y be seen as a lesson (in every sense of the term) for the nascent intellectual in Spanish A m e r i c a ; it is a lesson in hermeneutics, in interpretation. Specifically, it is an anti-symbolist lesson: Q u i x o t i c a l l y , Juan insists on seeing Lucia as " a symbol of ideal b e a u t y " (as the text says), and he does not perceive her as a sign, w i t h all the instability and ambiguity that this entails. A l a w y e r , an interpreter of l a w s , and of the w o r d s in w h i c h the l a w s are written, Juan must still learn to doubt, to distrust w o r d s . T h i s suspicion, this deeply ironic mistrust of everything that seems simple and easy to interpret, is one of the intellectual's most characteristic traits. A s M a r t i says in one of his m a x i m s : " O n e must trust the best and distrust the w o r s t in p e o p l e . " T h e " m o r a l " of this " f a b l e " by M a r t i may be that the intellectuals w h o d o not temper w i t h a profoundly critical spirit their naturally b o o k i s h tendency t o w a r d idealizations and formulas, will b e c o m e , like D o n Quijote or E m m a B o v a r y , victims of their o w n fictions. A similar portrait of the Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectual is found in Suva's only novel, De sobremesa. M o r e sympathetic to Decadentism than M a r t i , Silva w a s profoundly skeptical about the intellectuals' capacity to affect society through their w o r k . His novel's protagonist, José Fernan dez, a wealthy and energetic social climber as well as an aesthete, is unable to organize his intense perceptions of the w o r l d into a coherent system that will a l l o w him to take action. Surrounded by a r t w o r k s and obsessed IOI



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by the m e m o r y of Helena, a w o m a n he loved platonically, Fernández takes refuge from the chaotic reality of the outside w o r l d in a series of fantasies or dreams of order and p o w e r . T h e problem faced by Silva in his novel is h o w to defeat " d e c a d e n c e , " h o w to g o beyond passive contemplation into action. Suva's protagonist, Fernández, is immersed in a radically aestheticized w o r l d in w h i c h he not only surrounds himself w i t h beautiful objects but also tries to judge everything (concepts, experiences, and objects) from a primarily aesthetic standpoint. H e furthermore tries to steer clear of bourgeois values and customs such as marriage and the family, and w h e n he submits to them (as w h e n he devotes himself to his "business interests" in L o n d o n , for example), it is a l w a y s w i t h irony and as a kind of sport. T h e r e are evident affinities between Fernandez's lifestyle and the popular notion of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, w h i c h is echoed in the text of De sobremesa itself (at one point one of Fernandez's mistresses, a G e r m a n , pays him the supreme compliment by saying: " Y o u are the O v e r m a n , the Übermensch of w h i c h I d r e a m e d " ) . A series of " N i e t z s c h e a n " elements can be pointed out in the ideological content of Suva's novel as well as in its form: ideologically, the tendency to judge everything from an aesthetic rather than a moral or political perspective is reminis cent of Nietzsche's " t r a n s v a l u a t i o n " (Silva uses this term and alludes directly to Also sprach Zarathustra). In its formal aspects, De sobremesa's imitation of the personal diary or journal form produces a tendency t o w a r d fragmentation similar to that found in Nietzsche's writings. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that many apparently " N i e t z s c h e a n " ideas in Suva's text (the "aesthetization" of politics, the cult of energy, amorality, etc.) were shared by a w i d e variety of late nineteenthcentury writers and thinkers w h o m Silva surely had read in more detail, such as Ernest R e n a n , M a u r i c e Barres, and Gabrielle D ' A n n u n z i o . T h e image of the Spanish A m e r i c a n man of letters that appears in Suva's novel is, as w a s said before, similar to that in Lucía jerez (although Silva did not k n o w M a r t i ' s w o r k ) . L i k e Juan Jerez, José Fernandez's ambitions are frustrated by an environment w h o s e c o m p l e x i t y and diversity are oppressive. In both texts the role of w o m e n is similar: w o m e n hold the key to enigmas and to signs; they symbolize the realm of representation, w h o s e control a l w a y s escapes the men w h o try to possess it. De sobremesa abounds w i t h femmes fatales, frequently more perverse and dangerous than M a r t i ' s Lucia: there are the numerous demi-mondaines that Fernández takes as mistresses - a m o n g them the sexually ambiguous Lelia O r l o f f - as well as the w e a l t h y A m e r i c a n Nelly; O l g a , the G e r m a n baroness and reader of Nietzsche; M u s e l l a r o , the Italian reader of D ' A n n u n z i o , and the C o l o m b i a n C o n s u e l o , w h o does not read, and w h o most resembles Lucia Jerez. 102 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Unlike Juan Jerez, h o w e v e r , Fernández fancies himself a D o n Juan, although he also claims to have been emotionally victimized by w o m e n . H o w e v e r , there are other, more profound differences between both characters: not only does Juan - as M a r t i ' s literary alter ego - possess social and moral beliefs diametrically opposed to those of José Fernández, but also Juan and Fernández differ radically in their attitudes t o w a r d ideas and language. If Juan Jerez's "tragic flaw" w a s his incapacity to criticize himself, his surroundings, and language itself, Fernández goes to the opposite extreme by being extremely critical and distrustful of everything and everyone. T h i s hypercriticism of De sobremesa''s protagonist is linked w i t h his decidedly sensualist attitude: unable to organize his existence around any transcendental truth or belief, Fernández resorts to the senses (sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste) as the basis for all certainty, only to find that he is flooded w i t h a vertiginous and incoherent flow of sensations and impressions. In De sobremesa. Silva explores in greater detail than M a r t i the role of the self in literary and artistic production. T h r o u g h o u t the novel, Fernández seeks a transcendental principle w i t h w h i c h to " f r a m e " his existence (it is no coincidence that paintings are prominent in this text). H e seeks to strengthen his self - w h i c h has been w e a k e n e d by the multiplicity of sense impressions that o v e r w h e l m him - and thus become a true " a u t h o r , " a figure of authority in every sense. Like other " D e c a d e n tista," Silva believed that entropy w a s eroding history and society; " p r o g r e s s " w a s an illusion, w o r l d history appeared to be returning to its chaotic origins, and it w a s difficult to see the direction society w o u l d take in the future. T h e search for order and meaning in history leads Suva's protagonist to take refuge in the turn-of-the-century bourgeois interior. In his mansion, surrounded by the w o r k s of art he has collected, "far from the madding c r o w d , " he can carefully filter and arrange the sense impressions that reach him from the outside w o r l d , and converse w i t h a few well-chosen friends such as those w i t h w h o m he has dinner at the beginning of the novel. De sobremesa means "after-dinner t a l k , " and this is precisely w h a t the novel presents: a select g r o u p of upper-crust C o l o m b i a n men talking after their dinner at Fernandez's house. T h e topic of satiety, of repletion (of food as well as of the senses in general), runs throughout the text and further illuminates the meaning of the novel's title. A n after-dinner talk is not merely a trivial conversation but also an interval of digestion w h e n the body begins to assimilate w h a t it has consumed. It can also be a m o m e n t of reflection and dialogue, of rumination. Undoubtedly, Suva's novel evokes as part of its b a c k g r o u n d the tradition of the philosophical banquet that springs from Plato's Symposium, a w o r k w h i c h , like Suva's, deals w i t h the relation between eroticism, love, and k n o w l e d g e . T h e basic 103 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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problem of decadentist art and literature w a s its contradictory desire to innovate w i t h o u t breaking with tradition; to this end, decadentist writers tried to survey and accumulate the totality of humanity's art and culture (that is w h y most decadentist heroes live in houses that resemble museums and/or libraries), but this w a s only a preliminary step in a s l o w process of selection, of " d i g e s t i o n , " of the very best that humanity had produced. F r o m this process of selection and synthesis, decadentist writers believed, a new art w o u l d arise. A similar ambiguity is evident in the Decadentists' relation w i t h politics. A l t h o u g h Decadentism proposed a "strategic retreat" of literature a w a y from mundane topics and t o w a r d introspection and selfanalysis, Decadentists did not therefore cease to hold and express political and social opinions in their w o r k s . Silva did not dabble much in politics, but other important Modernists frequented dictators at both extremes of the political spectrum; g o o d examples are R u b e n D a r i o and his relation w i t h the Liberal General Z e l a y a , in 1907, and José Santos C h o c a n o (1875—1934) and his long association w i t h the sinister G u a t e m a l a n dictator, M a n u e l Estrada C a b r e r a . In Silva's novel, his protagonist e x p o u n d s extremely conservative, even reactionary, views about politics and society. A t one point, in a passage that prefigures novels such as Garcia M à r q u e z ' s El otorìo del patriarca (1975) [The Autumn of the Patriarch], Fernandez deliriously outlines a highly detailed " p l a n " w h i c h w o u l d a l l o w him to become the dictator, the "enlightened d e s p o t , " of Colombia. H o w e v e r , Fernandez's extreme and frequently incoherent views should not be confused w i t h those of Silva himself. In De sobremesa Silva gave novelistic voice to the existential, political, and literary uncertainties of the writers of his age. It w o u l d be risky, h o w e v e r , to extrapolate (as some have done) the opinions expressed by José Fernandez into the ideas of his author, José A s u n c i o n Silva. T h i s w o u l d be like believing Cervantes shared D o n Quijote's insanity. De sobremesa is a profoundly ironic, critical text that functions partly as an archive of Silva's multiple readings and preoccupations; it w o u l d be mistaken to deem it an autobiographical novel or to say that Silva intended to paint his self-portrait in the character of José Fernandez. Silva's self-criticism w a s so intense that he ended up by taking his life: he committed suicide shortly after finishing his novel. If Silva intended a self-portrait in José Fernandez, his portrayal is a selfcaricature, an anti-narcissistic gesture consistent with De sobremesa's resemblance to an anti-novel. Unlike his character, Silva could not resign himself to living in a w o r l d of fictions; even A r t could not save him. Soon after the publication of R o d ó ' s Ariel in 1900, the Venezuelan M a n u e l D i a z R o d r i g u e z published his novel Idolos rotos, in w h i c h a critique of R o d ó ' s call to action to the Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals may 104 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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be discerned. A l b e r t o Soria, the protagonist of D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s novel, is a y o u n g sculptor w h o has found in Paris the prestige and recognition he did not receive in his homeland. H e is nevertheless obliged to return to Venezuela because of his father's illness. O n c e there, he enters into conflict with the prejudice and provincialism of his compatriots. H e renews his relationship with his childhood sweetheart, M a r i a A l m e i d a , and searches for artistic and political projects in w h i c h he can become involved. Eventually, A l b e r t o sets up his sculptor's studio on the outskirts of C a r a c a s , where he begins w o r k on a statue of a " C r e o l e V e n u s . " In the political sphere, he participates in the activities of the so-called "ghetto of intellectuals," led by the physician Emazabel, w h o is trying to reform his country's chaotic and corrupt sociopolitical system. T h e narrative contains numerous passages in w h i c h the provincial customs and the deplorable moral and intellectual situation of the country are described: D i a z R o d r i g u e z depicts the gossipy social gatherings of the w o m e n , the pretentious society balls, and the political cliques that meet to plot and court favors in the plaza of C a r a c a s . O n e by one, A l b e r t o Soria's projects are destroyed by the narrow-mindedness of his fellow citizens. After the death of his father, A l b e r t o , feeling s o m e h o w liberated, distances himself from M a r i a A l m e i d a (without breaking off their relationship altogether) and begins an affair with the novel's femme fatale, Teresa Farias, a married w o m a n of c o m p l e x and truculent personality w h o combines religious fanaticism w i t h adultery. O n the pretext of m a k i n g an allegorical statue of Voluptuousness, Teresa and A l b e r t o meet secretly in his w o r k s h o p . Parallel to this plot, a series of political events occur w h i c h eventually contribute to the novel's denouement: one of the many scheming military officers unleashes a " r e v o l u t i o n " w h i c h A l b e r t o ' s younger brother Pedro joins, and his troops unseat the previous strongman. T h e new regime, received w i t h naive joy by the populace and w i t h skepticism by Soria, houses its troops temporarily in the School of Fine A r t s . W o r r i e d about the fate of his statues of the Faun, the N y m p h , and the C r e o l e V e n u s w h i c h he had donated to the School, A l b e r t o hurries to rescue them. M e a n w h i l e , M a r i a A l m e i d a , notified by a n o n y m o u s letters that A l b e r t o is deceiving her, breaks into A l b e r t o ' s w o r k s h o p , where she finds evidence of his betrayal and in a fit of anger destroys the paintings and w o r k s of art w i t h w h i c h A l b e r t o decorated the b e d r o o m where he slept w i t h Teresa Farias. For his part, A l b e r t o discovers with horror, upon entering the School of Fine A r t s , that his statues of the N y m p h and the Creole V e n u s have been mutilated and sexually assaulted by the soldiers (the statue of the Faun, because of its demonic appearance, has been respected). Beside himself, A l b e r t o Soria then bitterly renounces his fatherland and decides to abandon it forever, in a scene the author describes thus: "Before the iron 105 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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boots of the new conquerors, the barbarians of today (who also c o m e from the N o r t h ) , write it in a barbarous tongue for the blind, deaf, and infamous c r o w d to read, the slandered, offended, humiliated artist w r o t e w i t h the b l o o d of his w o u n d e d ideals, in his o w n heart, over the ruins of his home and the graves of his dead loves, one irrevocable and fateful phrase: FINIS P A T R I A E . " T h e " b r o k e n i d o l s " of the novel's title are literally Soria's statues, w h i c h , as w e have said, are vandalized at the novel's end by the revolutionary peasant army that invades C a r a c a s . Y e t the statues are also emblems of the rigid aestheticist and elitist ideology held by Soria and his companions in the "ghetto of intellectuals;" an ideology, according to D i a z R o d r i g u e z , that is bound to be destroyed by the harsh realities of early twentieth-century Spanish A m e r i c a . T h e ideology of Soria and Emazabel is to a great extent a caricature of R o d o ' s . It is an elitist vision w h i c h seeks to stir the artists and intellectuals into political action. T h e "salvation of the fatherland," as Emazabel explains in one of the meetings, will be the result of a " m o r a l regene ration" directed by the intellectuals, w h o will serve as mediators between the upper and l o w e r classes. Eventually, of course, the intellectuals will rule because of their superior w i s d o m and merit. H o w e v e r , the only concrete action to w h i c h Emazabel's vision leads is a rather pathetic plan to influence national politics by means of public lectures and art exhibitions. In Idolos rotos D i a z R o d r i g u e z suggests that R o d o ' s "arielist" vision of the intellectual is totally impractical in a society divided by such violent political and class struggles as Spanish A m e r i c a . D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s novel is also an exploration of the role of ideology in Spanish A m e r i c a n society that reaches back to Sir Francis B a c o n ' s theory of idola in his Novum Organum. B a c o n distinguished four types of "false n o t i o n s " or " i d o l s " : first are the "idols of the tribe," those " d e f o r m a t i o n s " of thought due to the inherent imperfection of the senses and the human mind; second are the "idols of the d e n , " the superstitions and personal prejudices of each individual; third are the "idols of the m a r k e t , " or "false n o t i o n s " produced by the abuse of language in everyday communication (particu larly in politics) and by the inherent ambiguity of language itself; fourth are the "idols of the theatre," those philosophical systems and ideas that because of tradition, credulity, or negligence, are not questioned and continue to exert influence on human thought. T h i s last type of " i d o l " is the one most similar to our current concept of " i d e o l o g y " : a body of unquestioned political or philosophical ideas w h i c h gives cohesion to certain groups in society and guides their actions. D i a z R o d r i g u e z finds examples of some of these " i d o l s " in turn-of-the-century Venezuelan 106


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society; thus, the "idols of the d e n " are represented by the conversation about superstitions in chapter 5, Part 1, w h i c h takes place in the living r o o m of A l b e r t o ' s house. T h e "idols of the m a r k e t , " or idola fori are represented in the novel by the scenes of political gossip and intrigue in the plaza of C a r a c a s . T h e "idols of the theatre" are the main focus of D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s novel, and their most striking manifestation in the text occurs in the description of the meeting of the intellectuals in A l b e r t o Soria's workshop. T h i s passage is of central importance in the novel, and resembles a tableau in its theatricality and immobility: in the meeting, Emazábel is the leader, and he is placed symbolically alongside a lighted lamp (whose light, h o w e v e r , is " w e a k and f a d e d , " according to the narrator); Soria and the others distribute themselves a m o n g the statues, " s o m e seated on the chaise-longue, others in w i c k e r chairs, others on half-polished pieces of marble and in w o o d e n benches. B e y o n d the n a r r o w circle of light, in the half-light that bathed the w a l l s , t w o bas-reliefs s h o w e d gigantic mythical battles, and the nymph-raping Faun smiled in its plaster c o p y . " E m a z á b e l is temporarily the master of the camera obscura (another venerable metaphor for ideology that D i a z R o d r i g u e z uses), and as he speaks he unconsciously moves the lamp back and forth, casting upon the w a l l the s h a d o w of the Faun. T h e Faun is a c o m p l e x allegorical figure that recurs in this text; in part, it symbolizes the Hellenistic element of Soria's ideology, but it later acquires a broader ironic and demonic aspect that connects it w i t h the figure of the author w h o , like a m o c k i n g d e m o n or demiurge, secretly pulls the strings of the plot in the camera obscura that is the novel. A l t h o u g h like the other Modernists D í a z R o d r i g u e z w a s obsessed (sometimes to the point of paralysis) w i t h order, harmony, and coherence, his style and the social preoccupations evident in his text already prefigure those of R ó m u l o G a l l e g o s ' s telluric novels. A s G a l l e g o s w o u l d d o more successfully later, D í a z R o d r i g u e z sought to transcend the topics of modernist writing to c o m e face to face w i t h the multiple and c o m p l e x reality of Venezuela; unfortunately, his project did not g o past the critical stage: D í a z R o d r i g u e z wished to break the " i d o l s " that symbolized the ideology behind modernist writing, but he could not replace them with a new literary ideology. Nevertheless, not a few aspects of the " n o v e l a s de la tierra" are prefigured in ídolos rotos: isn't G a l l e g o s ' s character of D o ñ a Bárbara a rural version of the urban femmes fatales like Teresa Farias? It w o u l d not be difficult to imagine a " t e l l u r i c " rewriting of this novel in w h i c h the narrative focus w o u l d fall on Pedro, A l b e r t o ' s brother, w h o runs off to " L a Q u i n t a " - the Sorias' rural estate - and joins w i t h his peons in General R o s a d o ' s uprising. T o write this, h o w e v e r , D í a z R o d r i g u e z w o u l d need to have been " p o s s e s s e d " by a different demon: not the G r e c o 107



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R o m a n Faun, but a more A m e r i c a n i z e d and primitive one like the "jungle spirit" that takes hold of M a r c o s V a r g a s in R ó m u l o G a l l e g o s ' s Canaima (i935).

A n o t h e r key w o r k in the tradition of the modernist novel is Enrique Larreta's La gloria de don Ramiro. A s the novel's subtitle, Una vida en tiempos de Felipe Segundo [A Life in the Times of Philip II] suggests, La gloria de don Ramiro is an attempt at an archaeological recreation of sixteenth-century Spain in the style of G u s t a v e Flaubert's Salammbo. Nevertheless, despite the subtitle, the life and personality of the p r o t a g o nist, D o n R a m i r o , as Juan C a r l o s G h i a n o (b. 1920) has observed in Análisis de "La gloria de don Ramiro" are closer to those of " D e c a d e n t " heroes in the mold of Des Esseintes, Juan Jerez, or José Fernández, than to the Spanish hidalgos. Indeed, the character of R a m i r o can be interpreted not only as a composite metaphorical portrait of the nascent Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals, but also of real-life modernist writers, including R u b é n D a r í o . R a m i r o ' s life can be summed up in verses from D a r í o ' s " L o fatal," as a constant vacillation between " l a carne que tienta con sus frescos racimos, / y la tumba que aguarda con sus fúnebres r a m o s , " as a desperate tug-of-war between action and contemplation, the senses and intellect, skepticism and d o g m a . His mixed origins (he is half-moorish) and his constant visions of social, artistic, religious, or martial glory, can be seen as a gloss of D a r í o ' s w e l l - k n o w n "Palabras liminares" to Prosas profanas (1896), w h e r e he asks rhetorically: " A r e there in my veins drops of African, or of chorotega or nagrandano Indian blood? It could well be, although my hands are those of a m a r q u i s . " Larreta clearly proposes a parallelism between the Spanish baroque topic of " d e s e n g a ñ o " ("disillusionment") and that of nineteenth-century " d e c a d e n c e " : in fact, D o n R a m i r o ' s life encompasses the last decades of the sixteenth century and the first five years of the seventeenth. R a m i r o lives in a fin de siécle, and he witnesses the beginnings of the long Spanish imperial decline that will reach its nadir in 1898. After leading an egotistic, criminal existence in w h i c h he tries to obliterate his racially m i x e d origins, R a m i r o ends his days in A m e r i c a where, after encountering Saint R o s a of L i m a , he devotes his energies to w o r k s of charity, and becomes k n o w n as " E l C a b a l l e r o T r á g i c o " ["The T r a g i c K n i g h t " ] . R a m i r o ' s spiritual errancy and final conversion are comparable to those of many Modernists at the turn of the century, from D a r í o and R o d ó to Santos C h o c a n o and N e r v o : after the self-centered but guilt-ridden literary experiments of M o d e r n i s m ' s " d e c a d e n t " phase, the Modernists, spurred by the crisis of 1898, decide to abandon their obsessive cuite du moi and seek to associate themselves, as "intellectuals," w i t h the great social and political movements of their time. A s R u b é n 108


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D a r í o declared in his " P r e f a c i o " to Cantos de vida y esperanza: "I am not a poet for the masses, but I k n o w that I must inevitably g o t o w a r d s t h e m . " T h e parallelism of the novel's dates w i t h those of Larreta's time is deliberately significant: R a m i r o dies in 1605, the year the first part of Cervantes's Don Quixote (the " K n i g h t of the M o u r n f u l C o u n t e n a n c e " ) is published, but also a parallel date to 1905, w h e n D a r í o publishes Cantos de vida y esperanza (which contains, a m o n g other things, his "Letanía a N u e s t r o Señor d o n Q u i j o t e " ) and U n a m u n o publishes Vida de don Quijote y Sancho. T h e evocation of Cervantes's protagonist also brings to mind the ideology of " a r i e l i s m , " since D o n Quijote and Ariel were symbolic figures that were used interchangeably in modernist discourse about the role of the writer in society. In his novel, Larreta describes the process through w h i c h R a m i r o divests himself of (in R o d ó ' s words) "the tenacious vestiges of C a l i b a n , s y m b o l of sensuality and clumsiness," and moves closer to the state symbolized by Ariel, "the empire of reason and feeling over the base impulses of i r r a t i o n a l i t y ; . . . a generous enthusiasm, a high and disinterested purpose that guides all actions, the spirituality of culture." D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s ídolos rotos w a s an attempt to break w i t h the ideology of M o d e r n i s m ; La gloria de don Ramiro aspires to construct a n e w ideology to replace it. Like many decadentist and post-decadentist w o r k s , Larreta's novel is an expression of "the longing to believe, w h i c h is already almost a belief" (to use R o d ó ' s expressions in his 1897 essay, " E l que v e n d r á " ) . In dealing w i t h such a deeply significant subject as the origins of modern Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, Larreta tends to sacralize, to fetishize the history and culture of Spain, seeking to lay the foundations of a pan-Hispanic "national t h e o l o g y . " It should be recalled that Larreta's original project had been to write " a b o o k about the great masters of Spanish painting; but in such a w a y that, after analyzing each painter's technique, I could slide off into the study of a different sector of the life of Spain under the H o u s e of Austria . . . It w a s . . . an imposing project. A cathedral. I had not yet laid the first stone and I w a s already feeling the vertigo of the scaffolding." A g o o d deal of the success of La gloria de don Ramiro in its day w a s due to its "alternance of archaism and m o d e r n i t y " (as A m a d o A l o n s o noted), an alternance that resulted from the novel's attempt to fuse an aesthetic, ironic view of religion w i t h a transcendentalist and vitalist faith w h o s e object w a s culture itself. Larreta's c o m p l e x and many-layered text is one of the very few modernist novels to hold a secure place in the current canon of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature, a canon that reflects the preferences and prejudices of critics imbued w i t h the realist aesthetic and social orientation of the 1930s' " n o v e l a s de la tierra." In many w a y s , La gloria de don Ramiro 109


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contributed to the forging of that critical ideology. A l t h o u g h it is not a telluric novel, Larreta's w o r k is nonetheless very much concerned with the sociohistoric origins of Spanish A m e r i c a , and in its re-search of Hispanic roots it returns to the origins of modern realist narrative, to the Quijote and the picaresque. Perhaps the modernist novel that best summarizes the dilemma of the M o d e r n i s t s ' attempt to link their w o r k visibly to their society and its problems is Pedro Prado's Alsino; in many w a y s , it can be considered the last great modernist novel. In his novel, Prado explores the tension between the desire for " r e a l i s m " (in narrative as well as politics) inherent in the M o d e r n i s t s ' newfound " A m e r i c a n i s m " and the elitist concept of the intellectual found in R o d ó ' s Ariel. If other modernist novels can be considered as more or less disguised allegories of this issue, Alsino is an overt, extensive, and c o m p l e x allegory about the destiny of the Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals. T h e symbolic figure that presides over this novel - as in Larreta's - is evidently R o d ó ' s Ariel. A l s i n o literally " c o n v e r t s , " changes his shape from that of a b o y to a w i n g e d being w h o in the midst of his conflicts w i t h the surrounding reality, gradually g r o w s ever more spiritual. U n d o u b tedly, there are also allusions in Alsino to the G r e e k myths of Icarus and Phaeton, but the links w i t h Shakespeare's Ariel, as interpreted by R o d ó , are more immediate. A s in Shakespeare's character, A l s i n o ' s parentage is of no consequence; he has been brought up by his grandmother, an old herbalist w h o m the people of the area refer to as an " o l d w i t c h , " and w h o may be seen as a parody (in a positive vein) of S y c o r a x , the w i t c h w h o m Ariel served before the arrival of Próspero on the island in The Tempest. Shortly after being made hunchbacked in the accident that in the end gives him w i n g s , A l s i n o (still deformed and Caliban-like) serves Ñ o N a z a r i o , a parody of Próspero (without M i r a n d a ) , w h o does sleight-of-hand tricks with birds and animals. Nevertheless, these are just prolegomena to the main plot, and as soon as A l s i n o sprouts w i n g s , the narrative moves a w a y from the S h a k e s p e a r e / R o d ó context to become the account of a haphazard, picaresque pilgrimage in w h i c h A l s i n o acquires greater self-knowledge and w i s d o m . T o w a r d the end, A l s i n o is blinded (by means of a love-potion) and his introspection and penchant for prophecy are intensified. T h i s is w h e n Alsino finally begins to talk and act like an intellectual. In chapter 3 7 , Alsino prophesies before a group of sick pilgrims: " Y e s , w a r is upon us, and for many the long sleep. H o w can w e avoid it? It will be fatal to all w h o participate in it. T h e winners, like the losers, will be dominated by far-away nations, and only useless b l o o d and ruins will be left everyw h e r e . " It is less important to ask to w h i c h w a r A l s i n o m a y be referring than to note the fact that he has condescended to m a k e a political

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pronouncement. N o r m a l l y , the character of A l s i n o speaks in a highsounding poetic prose w i t h little relevance to mundane realities. N e v e r theless, by the novel's end A l s i n o , like the character of R a m i r o in Larreta's novel, has decided to m o v e closer to the w o r l d of ordinary people. C o m m u n i o n w i t h others and w i t h everyday reality is s h o w n to be the source of true w i s d o m . H o w e v e r , A l s i n o has great difficulty in reaching this g o a l , because although - like a secular Saint Francis of Assisi - he enjoys near-perfect c o m m u n i o n w i t h nature, his w i n g s and his blindness make it difficult for him to participate in human society. Prado summarizes in this section of the novel the insoluble dilemma of the "arielist" intellectuals, w h o s e desire to be closer to the people and to become socially useful, is thwarted by their fundamentally aristocratic notion of intellectual w o r k . T h i s notion posits from the start an unbridge able g a p between the intellectual and "the masses." T h e "arielist" intellectual (like R o d o himself), although active in politics, lived in perpetual distress due to his continuous confrontation with the harsh realities of government and politics: his participation in the latter w a s usually limited to the traditional political parties (conservative and liberal) of the Spanish A m e r i c a n elites, and in them he usually preferred the role of advisor, of prophet or seer, a w a y from the l o b b y i n g and dealm a k i n g that typify political life. In such an environment, the intellectual w a s still regarded at the turn of the century as a kind of freak, an anomaly. N o w h e r e else in Spanish A m e r i c a w a s this situation more clearly evidenced, during the years Prado w r o t e Alsino, than M e x i c o during the Revolution. T h i s historical upheaval, that erased forever the elitist and positivistic belle epoque style of politics, w a s deeply rooted in the peasantry although its ideological orientation came largely from an urban middle class. M e x i c a n intellectuals, many of w h o m were refined H u m a n ists, w e r e reduced to mere secretaries or advisors to frequently unlettered chieftains of popular origin, like Emiliano Z a p a t a and Pancho Villa. T h e N o v e l of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , from L o s de abajo (1915) [The Underdogs] by M a r i a n o A z u e l a (1873-1952) to El dguila y la serpiente (1928) by M a r t i n Luis G u z m a n (1887-1976), is both a pathetic testimonial to, and a corrosive critique of, the M e x i c a n intellectuals' inefficacy within the R e v o l u t i o n . Alsino makes a similar point on a more general level and in less precise historical and geographic circumstances. Clearly, there w a s n o other w a y out of A l s i n o ' s dilemma than a n e w transformation, a new mutation of the intellectual. In his novel, Prado represents this metamorphosis as a suicide similar to the death of Icarus, after w h i c h A l s i n o ' s ashes remain suspended in the air and are scattered by the w i n d (chapter 4 1 ) . For Prado, as for R o d o , the solution to the "arielist" intellectual's impasse of whether or not to join w i t h the masses remains the dissemination of the intellectual's k n o w l e d g e through educa111 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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tion. T h e intellectual remains a teacher, an advisor, and - metaphorically - a " s o w e r " of ideas; A l s i n o ' s scattered ashes are reminiscent of the last lines of R o d ó ' s Ariel: " A s the c r o w d passes, I observe that, although they do not w a t c h the sky, the sky watches them. O v e r that dark and indifferent mass like furrowed earth, something descends from on high. T h e twinkling of the stars resembles the m o v e m e n t of a s o w e r ' s h a n d s . " A s may be seen from this brief survey, the refined critical study of modernist prose is still beginning, and there is much w o r k to be done. Aside from some recent and unpublished dissertations, a comprehensive book-length study of the modernist short story is still lacking. Studies of the textual interrelations between the various modernist genres, both in poetry and prose, are also needed: from the intersection of poetry and prose in the prose p o e m , to the relation between the chronicle, the short story, and the novel. Sophisticated analyses of numerous individual modernist novels are still to be made. Several of these novels deserve to be republished, preferably in critical editions, and brought into the canon. T h e study of modernist prose in all its rich variety serves to reinforce the view of M o d e r n i s m as a founding m o m e n t of twentieth-century Hispanic literature. Far from being a frivolous interlude, M o d e r n i s m w a s the Spanish A m e r i c a n s ' attempt to creatively assimilate the highly refined notions of language and literature produced by Industrial-Age Europe, and thus bring Spanish A m e r i c a n writing into the ranks of the W e s t ' s great literatures. T h e ample measure of their success is evident today, and that is w h y many of the major contemporary Spanish A m e r i c a n writers have chosen to e v o k e M o d e r n i s m and the belle apoque in their recent w o r k s , as seen in Carpentier's El recurso del método, G a r c í a M á r q u e z ' s El otoño del patriarca and El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Canción de Rachel (1969) by M i g u e l Barnet (b. 1940), The Buenos Aires Affair (1973) by M a n u e l Puig (b. 1939), and Colibrí (1985) by Severo Sarduy ( 1 9 3 7 1993), a m o n g others. It is n o w clear that w i t h o u t M o d e r n i s m ' s contribution to prose, t o d a y ' s Spanish A m e r i c a n literature, w i t h all its vitality and richness, is inconceivable. Like their modernist predecessors, t o d a y ' s Spanish A m e r i c a n writers, from G a r c í a M á r q u e z to G u i l l e r m o C a b r e r a Infante (b. 1929), from M a r i o V a r g a s Llosa (b. 1936) to Isabel Allende (b. 1942), continue to practice journalism assiduously in texts that are still called crónicas, although they differ considerably in style from those of the Modernists. T h e debt of the contemporary masters of the short story in Spanish A m e r i c a to the M o d e r n i s t s ' short story experiments, particularly in their use of erudition, p s y c h o l o g y , and the supernatural, is enormous, from Borges, C o r t á z a r , M i g u e l Angel Asturias (1899-1974), and Juan Rulfo (1918-1986) to G a r c í a M á r q u e z , José D o n o s o (b. 1925), and Julio R a m ó n 112 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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R i b e y r o (b. 1929). T h e r e is also a strong and clear sense of continuity in the development of the Spanish A m e r i c a n essay since M o d e r n i s m , not in terms of style but of ideas: responses to Ariel continue to be produced today, as Fernández R e t a m a r ' s polemic Caliban attests. Furthermore, the modernist essayists were the first Spanish A m e r i c a n writers to consciously and deliberately address the issue of Spanish A m e r i c a ' s cultural identity, and were thus the immediate models for the essays of historico-cultural investigation of the 1930s and 1940s by writers such as Pedro Henriquez Ureña, Alfonso Reyes, Ezequiel M a r t i n e z Estrada (1895-1964), and M a r i a n o Picón Salas (1901-1965). In the area of the novel, a certain thematic and stylistic continuity can be discerned between the modernist novel and the "telluric n o v e l s " of the 1920s and 1930s (as seen in ídolos rotos and La gloria de don Ramiro); but there are also pre-vanguardist traits in some of these texts (such as Lucia Jerez and De sobremesa): tendencies t o w a r d artificiality, fragmentation, irrationalism, caricature, and linguistic experimentation, that are barely held in check by the oldfashioned modernist desire for formal h a r m o n y and coherence. T h e r e seems to be a more than passing resemblance between t o d a y ' s critical concept of postmodernity and the fin-de-siécle Decadentism to w h i c h many Modernists either responded or o w e d allegiance. Both postmodernity and Decadentism are ill-defined critical concepts, but beyond that gross similarity there are other more specific resemblances: in both cases there is an aesthetic impulse that rejects absolute novelty and posits instead that all art is but a recombination of previous elements. Both forms of art are therefore compendious: collecting, cataloguing and selecting previous moments of art history. In both there is a feeling of exhaustion, a feeling that art and history can g o no further, that masks a hidden millenarism. In both, finally, there is a return to form, though not as an a priori category but as a challenge to creativity. It is therefore not surprising to find that many of t o d a y ' s most experimental, " p o s t m o d e r n " Spanish A m e r i c a n narrators, such as M i g u e l Barnet, Elena P o n i a t o w s k a (b. 1933), Luis Rafael Sánchez (b. 1936), and Severo Sarduy, s h o w an affinity to Decadentism and e v o k e in their w o r k , as p a r o d y and h o m a g e , many of the traits of modernist writing.


[ 3 ]

The Vanguardia and its implications Hugo / . Verani

T h e term Vanguardia [Avant-Garde] is collectively applied to a diverse range of literary movements - such as Creacionismo, Ultraísmo [Ultraism], Estridentismo, and numerous other -ismos — w h i c h appeared in Latin A m e r i c a between approximately 1 9 1 6 and 1935. A n y attempt to establish a c h r o n o l o g y of a literary p h e n o m e n o n is problematic and debatable. W h i l e in European literature it is more or less agreed that the manifesto of Futurism in 1909 and the second surrealist manifesto in 1930 can be considered the beginning and ending documents of the A v a n t G a r d e , in Latin A m e r i c a there is no similar consensus. I suggest, h o w e v e r , that w e can discern a turning point, a change of direction around the dates I have proposed. Prior to the publication of Vicente H u i d o b r o ' s El espejo de agua (1916), there were only influential precursors and isolated anticipations within the dying rumbles of Modernismo; and by the time Pablo N e r u d a published his second Residencia en la tierra (1935), [Residence on Earth], the A v a n t - G a r d e had fulfilled its historic purpose. Afterwards, there w a s a displacement of sensibility, a notable decrease in the experimental m o o d and a sharp increase in the social role of the author; particularly, there w a s a consolidation of the literary achieve ments of the period. In other w o r d s , around 1935 the A v a n t - G a r d e became the dominant mode and Latin A m e r i c a n literature m o v e d into different aesthetic and historical concerns, in rhythm with the rapidly changing w o r l d . Distinctly European in origin, the different movements of the A v a n t G a r d e stimulated frenzied cultural activity in Latin A m e r i c a , and evolved from a belligerent and derivative first phase into a wide variety of manifestations, conditioned by the traditions of the societies in w h i c h they appeared and central to the development of Latin A m e r i c a n letters. T h e predominant signs of the succession of short-lived tendencies, trends, and movements are the experimental, innovative character of the poetry and fiction, and the conscious opposition to the o u t m o d e d literary codes 114 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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of the preceding time (Modernismo in poetry and Regionalismo [Region alism] in narrative). A s Peter Burger observed in the Theory of the AvantGarde, "it is no longer the h a r m o n y of the individual parts that constitutes the w h o l e ; it is the contradictory relationships of heterogeneous ele m e n t s . " Indeed, the distinguishing features of the A v a n t - G a r d e dispute the traditional functions of literature: the Vanguardist discards not only the h a r m o n y of the individual parts, the organic and stylistic unity, but all views of literature as description, mimesis, or expression of feelings, in favor of an absolute freedom of invention, w h i c h led to broadening of the thematic material and the development of startling innovations in language and structure. Literature w a s conceived as a construction of the mind, an act of creation free from the controls imposed by traditional forms and external reality. A reflexive awareness distinguishes the A v a n t - G a r d e , that is, the conviction that an effort to radically change literature in modern culture demands an activist role, especially the adoption of an explicitly critical stand t o w a r d the dominant values of the times. T h e Vanguardists were not involved in any kind of systematic theoretical thinking, but, rather, felt the urgent need to formulate c o m b a t i v e , irreverent, and iconoclastic documents to develop new means of harnessing the attention of the public. Since Futurism, most movements of the first t w o decades of our century shared, despite their diversity and contradictory premises, a c o m m o n bond: a radical rejection of the literature of the past and a commitment to disrupt the continuity of traditional values and ideas. In this respect, critics tend to agree in defining the A v a n t - G a r d e in p a r a d o x i cal terms, as a manifestation of an "aesthetics of o p p o s i t i o n " (Yuri L o t m a n ) , of " o p p o s i t i o n and rupture" (Eugene Ionesco), a "tradition of rupture" ( O c t a v i o Paz), or a "tradition of the n e w " (Harold R o s e m b e r g ) , implying a n e w departure and a complete break from aesthetic conventions. T h i s cult of the new ( " M a k e it n e w ! " w a s Ezra Pound's challenge) echoed in y o u n g artists everywhere, spreading and fragmenting into numerous trans-national movements, under different labels. In the 1920s, in particular, Latin A m e r i c a n intellectuals were actively transgressing the literary canon, and the manifesto became a fitting emblem of their activity, a w a y of self-affirmation and deliberate subversion of conven tional writing and bourgeois respectability. Manifestos, proclamations, public performances, open letters, polemics, and the little magazine became a trademark of the period, often more interesting than the literary w o r k s produced, as maintained by G u i l l e r m o de T o r r e , one of the participants in Spanish Ultraism and first historian of the international A v a n t - G a r d e . T o write about literature became the equivalent to m a k i n g it, and many scholars (Adrian M a r i n o , Burger, Marjorie Perloff) agree 115 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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that the manifestos were the m o v e m e n t s ' distinctive and preferred means of expression. T o remain on a conceptual level as a deliberate performa tive stance w a s such a widespread practice, that Johan H u i z i n g a contemp tuously remarked, in In the Shadow of Tomorrow: "It is a pre-eminently modern p h e n o m e n o n that art begins w i t h proclaiming a m o v e m e n t w h i c h it christens w i t h an -ism, and only then attempts to m a k e the correspond ing w o r k of art" (p. 182). In rapid succession, groups committed to experimental literature appeared almost simultaneously throughout the continent, as a result of a revolt of y o u t h against the art of the dominant culture and of the inadequacies of the established literary idiom to convey a dramatically changed social and cultural situation. A new historical context - the technological urban society - brought a sense of urgency and a need to invent innovative forms to correspond to the new experiences of a transformed w o r l d - in short, a radical change in artistic expression. By 1 9 1 6 , the year R u b e n D a r i o died, Modernismo had settled comfortably into aestheticism and had exhausted its inventive spirit. Historically, the emergence around 1916 of a n e w sensibility unchained the imagination and opened the w a y to n e w explorations of the limits of the writer's creative latitude. T h e manifesto w a s the primary project of the n e w movements; it epitomized a spirit of unrestricted freedom and an erosion of generic distinctions. Its aggressive, polemical, and iconoclastic style w a s a strategy to p r o v o k e a predictable scandal and shock the reader's complacency, while demanding the devotions of a cult. T h e typographical presentation and a format d r a w n from advertising posters w a s an effective practice to arrest the attention of the public. Consider the format of " A c t u a l N o 1, " the first manifesto of the M e x i c a n Estridentistas. It combines vertical printing, different typefaces, headings, numbered lists, blank spaces, illustrations, capital letters, idiosyncratic spellings, neologisms, and advertising slogans. It disrupts readerly expectations in a w a y reminiscent of the futurist manifestos. In fact, p r o v o c a t i o n of the audience by comically absurd m o c k e r y of the cultural myths of society is rooted in the futurist movement, founded by F. T . Marinetti in 1909. His flair for highlighting his ideas humorously and aggressively is taken up by M a n u e l M a p l e s A r c e and the Estridentistas. Marinetti's amusing plays on w o r d s , such as " G i o g o n d a acqua purgativa italiana" [ " G i o c o n d a Italian purgative w a t e r " ] turn up in M a p l e s A r c e as " j C h o p i n a la silla electrical" [ " C h o p i n to the electric chair!"]. Furthermore, both movements, Estridentismo and Futurism, p r o v o k e the bourgeois establishment by ridicul ing age-old beliefs and the official order w i t h great crudity and in scatological terms. T h e popularity of these publications rested almost exclusively on scandal, buffoonery, dissidence, and jocular and attentiongrabbing dictums. T h e Futurist's contempt for w h a t w a s considered w o r t h y (museums, libraries, classical art) w a s taken up by other m o v e 116 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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merits in Latin A m e r i c a as well. For instance, Marinetti's much quoted battlecry " a roaring motorcar . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of S a m o t h r a c e , " becomes, in the manifesto of Martin Fierro in Argentina, " a g o o d Hispano-Suiza [automobile] is a W O R K O F A R T much more perfect than a Louis X V sedan chair"; and so on. T h e y were strident blasts designed to ridicule w o r n - o u t notions and affront respectable public opinion and g o o d taste. Manifestos and proclamations became an art form in themselves, a model for polemical p r o v o c a t i o n and tendentious writing, w h o s e major strategy w a s a radical disruption of the prevailing notions of literature. Behind the various labels there w a s a unifying experience, namely, selfp r o m o t i o n in an unmistakable language (belligerent, dissident, and dogmatic), predisposed to hyperbole and categorical defiance, aimed at persuading the reader to join the movement. T h e manifestos varied greatly in type, but most used a journalistic layout and publicity slogans to demythify prestigious literary idioms with mischievously irreverent wit. O n e of the manifestos of the Estridentistas cried out, for instance: " V i v a el mole de g u a j o l o t e " ["Long live the spicy turkey s t e w " ] , set off from the text. Furthermore, the manifestos dismantled established notions of literature w i t h expressive typography, syntactical indeterminacy, neolo gisms, colloquialisms, incoherence, and collages of incompatible thoughts in unexpected contexts. T h e A v a n t - G a r d e w a s a g r o u p manifestation, but paradoxically their proclamations, written in the first person plural, exalted individualism and the uniqueness of the writers' doctrines and craft. T h e y were collaborative ventures (with the exception of H u i d o b r o ' s crusades), in w h i c h the author diluted his individuality in a collective identity and, at the same time, presented himself as a prophetic visionary and as the leader of a group w i t h wide-ranging programs and international connections. T h e Avant-Gardists shared a c o m m o n objective: to turn the text into a public event as a w a y to establish a space for critical debate to challenge the dominant sensibility and to emphasize their privileged activity. Virtually all of the movements were p r o m o t e d by periodicals, often ephemeral, but a l w a y s a barometer of novelties and aesthetic activity. T h e y functioned as organs for a specific literary current, w h o s e primary purpose w a s to publish the proclamations announcing the foundation of a n e w movement and examples of its w o r k , usually poetry. Such periodicals were particularly celebrated for creating an environment conducive to experimental writing and for enabling local writers to read contemporary foreign literature and become acquainted w i t h the leading painters of the times. H o w e v e r , many of the most respected reviews were not attached to any particular tendency. In fact, the four most influential ones cultivated an uninterrupted flow of c o m m u n i c a t i o n w i t h the newest developments in 117 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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contemporary artistic trends. T w o were primarily literary forums: Martin Fierro in Buenos Aires and Contemporáneos in M e x i c o ; t w o others were pluralistic journals, largely literary, w h i c h responded to the social concerns of the 1920s: Amauta, in L i m a , reflected the sensibility and Socialist agenda of its director, José C a r l o s M a r i á t e g u i , and Revista de Avance, in H a v a n a , sponsored by a brilliant g r o u p of intellectuals foremost a m o n g them, Alejo Carpentier - flourished in a state of cultural eclecticism. In Latin A m e r i c a , the Vanguardia included a remarkable constellation of poets w h o m o v e d b e y o n d established conventions t o w a r d radical linguistic and formal experimentation, a w a r e of the inadequacy of traditional artistic means of c o m m u n i c a t i o n to reflect the c o m p l e x , disjointed, and changeable w o r l d of the twentieth century. T h e emergence of V a n g u a r d i s m is closely linked to the whimsical H u i d o b r o , the consum mate tactician of avant-garde attitudes. N o poet of his generation w r o t e more extensively on the process of poetic creation and O l i v e r i o G i r o n d o w a s the only other writer to p r o l o n g an avant-garde stance as a deeply rooted artistic c o m m i t m e n t well into the 1930s and beyond. H u i d o b r o ' s movement, Creacionismo, w a s not only the first but also the most carefully elaborated avant-garde tendency in Latin A m e r i c a . In "Non serviam" (1914), H u i d o b r o ' s earliest manifesto, he outlines his poetic credo, the need to invent new w o r l d s , independent from that of N a t u r e . A r t must cease imitating the demands of the external w o r l d : "Non serviam. I will not be y o u r slave, M o t h e r N a t u r e . I will be y o u r M a s t e r . " In 1 9 1 6 , H u i d o b r o traveled to Europe and became a participant in the cubist movement, co-founding w i t h Pierre Reverdy the journal NordSud, (Paris, 1 9 1 7 ) , publishing several b o o k s of poetry in French, and strengthening his passion for polemics, sustained to the very end of his life. H u i d o b r o ' s constant theorizing culminates w i t h Manifestes, a reformula tion of the principles of C u b i s m , w h i c h by then had run its course. Written in French and marked by aggressive defensiveness, it w a s an answer to A n d r e Breton's Manif estes du surrealisme (1924). O n e of the texts. " C r e a c i o n i s m o , " contains his main aesthetic tenets: humanize objects and m a k e them intimate by disregarding the conventional idea of space; make the vague become precise, the abstract concrete and the concrete abstract; change the accepted value of the customary associations of elements. A l o n g w i t h many other A v a n t - G a r d i s t s , H u i d o b r o emphasized the juxtaposition of disparate realities, and the incessant shifting of unrelated images to create an effect of multiplicity and simultaneity. H e banned descriptiveness, ornamental and superfluous adjectives, disregarded the conventions of rationality, syntax, and structural coherence, building up a mental construct w i t h o u t any attempt to portray anything external to the 118 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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literary texture. For H u i d o b r o a " c r e a t e d " p o e m w a s " a p o e m in w h i c h each constituent part, and the complete w h o l e , s h o w s something new, independent from the external w o r l d , detached from any other reality except its o w n " ("El c r e a c i o n i s m o , " in Verani, Las vanguardias literarias en Hispanoamérica, 228). T h e unmistakable identity of his poetry comes from the distinct fusion of apparently unrelated materials and his ability to discover the hidden relations a m o n g discordant ideas, the hidden thread w h i c h unites the separate realities, and, consequently, his p o w e r to stimulate the inner w o r k i n g s of the mind. H u i d o b r o began experimenting w i t h the visual representation of poetry as early as 1 9 1 3 . His development of the calligram, the graphic arrangement of w o r d s to e v o k e the image described, such as in " L a capilla a l d e a n a , " from Canciones en la noche (1913), printed so that the outline delineates a chapel, is parallel to G u i l l a u m e Apollinaire's famous models. H o w e v e r , his first notable e x a m p l e of Creacionismo is his manifesto in verse form, " A r t e p o é t i c a , " w h i c h is included in El espejo de agua. In this p o e m , H u i d o b r o proclaims his faith in the self-sufficiency of art and begins his search for a n e w poetic expression. N a t u r e is granted n e w meanings, as highlighted by t w o famous lines: Por qué cantáis la rosa, ¡oh Poetas! Hacedla florecer en el poema [Why do you sing the rose, oh Poets! M a k e it blossom in the poem] In the early stages of the movement, H u i d o b r o shifted t o w a r d a poetry cut off from c o m m o n experience. H e attempted to replace the depiction of a coherent and definable portrayal of reality and the exploration of a subjective process w i t h the invention of an a u t o n o m o u s entity, w i t h a minimum of correspondences to the external w o r l d . H e depended heavily on the free play of the imagination, on a fragmented and discontinuous form, and on the use of space to forge an effect of simultaneity. In 1918 H u i d o b r o published t w o b o o k s crucially important to the development of vanguard poetry in the Hispanic w o r l d . T h e radically revolutionary poems of Ecuatorial and especially of Poemas árticos [Arctic Poems] gave birth to the literary A v a n t - G a r d e in Latin A m e r i c a and, at the same time, played a major role in the creation of Spanish Ultraísmo, transplanted to Buenos Aires by Jorge Luis Borges u p o n his return to Argentina in 1 9 2 1 . T h e s e b o o k s display the innovative formal aspects of his w o r k , w h i c h recur w i t h increasing dexterity throughout his poetry, culminating in Altazor, his masterpiece. T h e juxtaposition of unrelated items destroys the associative p o w e r of the language and reveals a new kind of poetic expression, stripped of all its customary associations. " S o m b r a " [ S h a d o w ] , from Poemas árticos, is a characteristic example: 119 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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La sombra es un pedazo que se aleja Camino de otras playas En mi memoria un ruiseñor se queja Ruiseñor de las batallas Que canta sobre las balas HASTA C U A N D O S A N G R A R A N LA VIDA La misma luna herida N o tiene sino un ala El corazón hizo su nido En medio del vacío Sin embargo Al borde del mundo florecen las encinas Y L A P R I M A V E R A V I E N E SOBRE L A S G O L O N D R I N A S [The shadow is a fragment that departs En route to other shores In my memory a nightingale complains Nightingale of battles That sings above all the bullets H O W L O N G WILL T H E Y BLEED LIFE T h e moon itself is wounded It has only one wing T h e heart built its nest In the middle of the void Nonetheless At the edge of the world the oaks bloom A N D SPRING C O M E S A B O V E T H E S W A L L O W S ] Poetry becomes visual: typography replaces syntax as a w a y of establishing relationships between w o r d s . C a p i t a l letters, absence of punctuation, displaced margins, multiple patterns on the page, and blank spaces are used to achieve a visual effect. L i k e the Cubists, H u i d o b r o exploits the collage, the juxtaposition of disparate elements freed from accepted logic to create a truly n e w aesthetic experience. His conscious effort to develop I20



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multiple metaphors to bring together opposite or unrelated ideas, w i t h o u t explaining their connection, takes on the character of a deliberately fabricated object, forcing the reader to seek aesthetic pleasure in the discovery of unexpected correlations amidst the seemingly chaotic c o m b i nations of w o r d s . H u i d o b r o placed great emphasis on cerebral craftmanship. His most important b o o k , Altazor, is a c o m p l e x but profoundly unified spiritual adventure into oblivion, a remarkable summation of his achievement as a poet. It represents a synthesis of creacionista aesthetics and metaphysical concerns, a powerful meditation on the relativity of h u m a n values, conveying an anguished sense of non-being, infused w i t h an apocalyptic tone. In Altazor, H u i d o b r o pushed to the limit the need to revitalize language, to experiment beyond c o m m o n verbal and logical connections, transcending the limits of poetic discourse. Written in seven cantos, discontinuous as is modern life, it interweaves a great variety of style, tone, themes, and unrelated stimuli. It combines lyric poetry and narrative stream of consciousness, sprinkled with passages of playful h u m o r and anguished desolation. T h e speaker portrays himself as an "anti-poet," plunging through space t o w a r d Earth in a parachute on a journey w h i c h is perceived as a fall into the abyss of existence. M o d e r n society is seen as disintegrating into fragments, reduced to ruins by a crisis of values and by the First W o r l d W a r (the p o e m w a s in progress as early as 1919). In the final canto, the efficacy of poetry itself is questioned: H u i d o b r o delibera tely interrupts the process of denotation reducing poetry to a combination of sounds generating their o w n significations. T h e progressive disinte gration of conventional language parallels the shipwreck of humanity, lucidly reflecting the decay of human consciousness in a hostile and ominous w o r l d . Ultraísmo and Estridentismo emerged almost simultaneously as selfconscious and combative groups, bent on launching playful attacks upon the bourgeois establishment. Ultraísmo began in Buenos Aires in D e c e m b e r of 1921 w i t h the distribution of Prisma, a leaflet written by Borges and his literary friends, heralding their aims and introducing their poetry. In a similar vein, and in the same month, the Estridentistas papered the walls of buildings in M e x i c o City w i t h their poster, " A c t u a l , " signed by M a p l e s A r c e and endorsed by a " D i r e c t o r i o de V a n g u a r d i a , " with 200 signatures. Prisma and " A c t u a l " became the opening salvos of rebellious y o u n g writers devoted to a radical break with existing norms, d r a w i n g attention to their attempts to erode provincialism and introduce new literary forms in the t w o largest Spanish A m e r i c a n cities. In spite of the claims of originality of the main writers of these movements, there is little doubt that their activities were firmly rooted in the European avantgarde tendencies of the previous decades, eclectically b o r r o w i n g from 121 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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diverse -isms (Futurism, C u b i s m , D a d a i s m , Expressionism). T h e exalta tion of metaphor to fuse different areas of experience in order to achieve an elusive and hermetic expression, challenging the reader's imagination, w a s one of the basic premises of the A v a n t - G a r d e . H u i d o b r o ' s belief that the image is the clasp that unites disparate realities, w h o s e p o w e r resides in the effect of revelation, is reiterated and complemented by Borges and M a p l e s A r c e . Borges states that the metaphor excited the Ultraistas "because of its algebraic w a y of bringing distances together," while M a p l e s A r c e remarked that the Estridentistas attempted to "relate or merge disparate terms so that they produced surprise or e x p e c t a t i o n " (Quiroz in Siempre!, M a y 1 2 , 1 9 7 1 ) . In his manifesto, " U l t r a í s m o , " of 1 9 2 1 , Borges provided the definitive ultraist p r o g r a m . Four points sum up the fundamental precepts of the movement: (1) reduction of poetry to its primordial element: the meta phor; (2) elimination of connectives and superfluous adjectives; (3) abolition of ornaments, confessions, circumstantial detail, preaching, and affected vagueness; (4) synthesis of t w o or more images into one to broaden the p o w e r of suggestion of language. T h e s e precepts illustrate very well that the ultraist p o e m should contain a series of unconnected metaphors abruptly juxtaposed, w i t h o u t apparent discernible connec tion, to e x p a n d the expressiveness of language, thus leaving more latitude for the reader's imagination. In Buenos Aires, the short-lived Prisma - published for only t w o issues w a s replaced by t w o other journals as the forums through w h i c h the new sensibility flowed: Proa and, particularly, the widely read Martín Fierro, the most h u m o r o u s and satirical avant-garde review. T h e latter's famous manifesto expressed clearly the strategy and implications of the Argenti nian A v a n t - G a r d e : irreverence, aggressiveness, playfulness, and caustic irony, as an attack u p o n the old conventions and a w a y to ferment activity and to p r o m p t a shift in sensibility. Martín Fierro became the center of aesthetic debate in Argentina, indispensable for the development of the environment that modern literature required and for the stimulation of experimental writers. A prime e x a m p l e of avant-garde writing is Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía, by G i r o n d o , one of the editors of the journal and the author of its unsigned manifesto; it excels in its emphasis on visual images arranged in a cubist tableau to bring together conflicting m o o d s , causing an incongruous and h u m o r o u s effect. G i r o n d o also initiates an anti-literary stance, as he himself stated in an open letter to an association of sectarian comrades: " O n e finds rhythms descending a staircase, p o e m s t h r o w n in the middle of the street, poems collected as one gathers cigarette butts on the s i d e w a l k . " Later b o o k s , Calcomanías and Espantapájaros (Al alcance de todos), demonstrate that the avant-garde spirit w a s not a transitional development, but an intrinsic component of 122 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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his poetics. T h e exploration of the dissonance of language reaches its most startling dimension in En la masmédula, a very late b o o k . Undeniably, Borges is the creative genius a m o n g the promoters of Ultraísmo, but in the 19x0s he shared the spotlight w i t h a generation increasingly sensitive to the possibilities of breaking w i t h tradition. T h e w o r k s of G i r o n d o , of course, and of R i c a r d o M o l i n a r i , L e o p o l d o M a r e c h a l , N o r a h L a n g e , Eduardo G o n z á l e z L a n u z a (author of Prismas, a b o o k called by Borges " e x e m p l a r y of Ultraísmo, archetypical of a generation"), remain n o t e w o r t h y standards of avant-garde poetry, as is the narrative of M a c e d o n i o Fernández and R o b e r t o A r l t , to be discussed later. Borges defined and exalted Ultraísmo, but his contribution to the movement is primarily limited to the use of startling images in his early poetry, published in Spanish periodicals and largely uncollected by him. In contrast to his theoretical writings, his o w n poetic practice is not prompted by exterior stimuli, but, rather, by an "essential reality," as he called his motivation for writing. In Fervor de Buenos Aires, his first b o o k , and in Luna de enfrente, his cult of the metaphor is instrumental in transmuting the objective reality of the city into an emotionally charged inner situation, into suggestive recollections of personal feelings, thus diluting and in fact undermining ultraist rules. Borges quickly moves a w a y from Ultraism's aesthetic restrictions - the craving for novelty and metaphorical discovery - into self-reflexive, ironic and metaphysical projections, into imaginative dimensions of time, a practice progressively dominant in his writing. W h e n M e x i c o began to emerge from the cultural sterility brought on by the R e v o l u t i o n , José Juan T a b l a d a emerged as a transitional vanguard figure. In Un día. . ., he introduced the Japanese haiku - a brief p o e m , usually three verses long, portraying the fusion of conflicting forces into a unique image, w h o s e underlying unity is often difficult to perceive. A classic example Trozos de barro por la senda en penumbra saltan los sapos [Chunks of mud along the twilight path toads hop] In Li-Po y otros poemas, he envisioned quite different artistic possibilities. H e introduced space as an expressive factor of poems and created lyrical ideograms, similar in essence and form to H u i d o b r o ' s calligrams. H o w ever, T a b l a d a , w h o spent thirty years in exile, in relative obscurity, primarily in N e w Y o r k C i t y , exerted little impact upon his contemporar ies in M e x i c o . 123 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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W i t h the Estridentistas, h o w e v e r , cultural life in M e x i c o underwent a radical upheaval. A s the name suggests, the m o v e m e n t intended to p r o v o k e and it stridently extended buffoonery and hysterics to their limits, attaining its initial impetus in a vehement repudiation of prevailing values, norms, and principles: historical tradition and national heroes, reactionary ideologies, religion, morals, and - naturally - the literature of the past. T h e m o v e m e n t ' s principal adherents - the poet M a p l e s A r c e , the chronicler G e r m á n List A r z u b i d e , the novelist Arqueles V e l a and the painter R a m ó n A l v a de la C a n a l - celebrate the great inventions o f modern life, emanating from the dynamics of technological industries (aeroplanes, the cinema, the p h o n o g r a p h , automobiles, etc.), bringing to their w o r k the d y n a m i s m of the industrialized w o r l d and modern mass culture. T h e kind of c o s m o p o l i t a n poetry preferred by M a p l e s A r c e , in Andamios interiores and Poemas interdictos, represents a variation of the radical explorations of the Creacionistas and Ultraistas. Fragmentation, displacement, simultaneity, and juxtaposition of u n c o m m o n images, w i t h o u t transitions and disregarding the conventions of logic and syntax, were dominant once again. Every avant-garde artist claims originality above all, but there is no doubt that Estridentismo w a s an eclectic m o v e m e n t intertwined w i t h similar Latin A m e r i c a n tendencies of the period, w i t h o u t significantly different contributions. T h e defining feature of the Estridentistas w a s , not surprisingly in postrevolutionary M e x i c o , a desire to achieve for literature a sense of solidarity w i t h the underprivileged masses, a political activism unlike any other in the early 1920s. A l o n g s i d e the muralist painters (José Clemente O r o z c o , D i e g o Rivera, and D a v i d Alfaro Siqueiros), they bear witness to the intense social consciousness of the age. Literature and painting became w e a p o n s at the service of social, political, and ideological causes, acquiring in M e x i c o a distinctive period quality. Urbe (1924), by M a p l e s A r c e , translated into English by John D o s Passos as Metropolis (1929), is a tribute to the w o r k e r s in a mechanized and alienating city, a glorification of the masses and of socialist revolution. Like most avant-garde movements, Estridentismo w a s short-lived. H o w e v e r , it radically altered aesthetic traditions and its rebellion left a ferment later to be exploited by more gifted writers. A l m o s t simulta neously w i t h the break-up of Estridentismo in 1927, w e witness in M e x i c o a great upsurge of intellectual activity. T h e w o r k s of a n e w g r o u p of writers, centered around a series of journals, primarily Ulises and Contemporáneos, gradually developed into the country's high point in modern poetry. Its members included the most active y o u n g writers of the moment: X a v i e r Villaurrutia, C a r l o s Pellicer, José G o r o s t i z a , Jaime T o r r e s Bodet, Salvador N o v o , Gilberto O w e n , Jorge Cuesta, and Ber nardo O r t i z de M o n t e l l a n o . T h e primary g o a l of these Contemporáneos 124 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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w a s to link up M e x i c a n letters w i t h the main currents of contemporary European and A m e r i c a n art and literature. O n the one hand, they m o v e d a w a y from nationalism and social commitment t o w a r d universalism and aestheticism; on the other, they abandoned the unlimited freedom to experiment of the Estridentistas, replacing it w i t h an introspective approach to literature, with a convergence of spontaneity and controlled lucidity, effectively taking advantage of the gains of the A v a n t - G a r d e . Nocturnos and Nostalgia de la muerte, by Villaurrutia, reveal an exploration of the dark w o r l d of the subconscious, a passionate pursuit of a Surreal nature, unmatched in M e x i c o in his time; and Muerte sin fin [Death Without End] by G o r o s t i z a , written at the end of the period, in 1939, represents the culmination of a poetic generation. It is a book-length p o e m about the discovery of consciousness and its fall into oblivion, and the p a r a d o x i c a l , endless cycle of living and dying. Muerte sin fin reflects G o r o s t i z a ' s idea of poetry w h i c h is stated in the prologue to Poesía. T h e r e he proposes poetry to be an investigation of fundamentals - love, life, death, and G o d - w h i c h is also meant to undermine language, m a k i n g it more transparent. Such intense reflexion is far removed from the spirit of the A v a n t - G a r d e , but the p o e m " w o u l d not have been w r i t t e n , " as José Emilio Pacheco has said, " h a d it not been for the radical experiences of the 1920s" ( " N o t a sobre la otra v a n g u a r d i a " ) . F r o m 1921 o n w a r d s , most other countries, in addition to M e x i c o , had some influential individual or g r o u p programmatically calling for an abrupt break w i t h tradition, founding movements, issuing manifestos, publishing journals, polemicizing, etc. Naturally, different cultural, social, political, and historical situations determined an uneven develop ment of the A v a n t - G a r d e throughout the continent. W h i l e the earliest and most sophisticated manifestations flourished in the main centers of urban culture (Buenos Aires, L i m a , Santiago, M e x i c o City), groups in other countries played an important role in the development of the national literatures and they deserve a brief account in the present context. For instance, a steady stream of -isms enlivened the cultural life of Puerto R i c o : Diepalismo (1921; so labeled for the initial letters of the names of the founders, José I. de Diego Padró and Luis Palés M a t o s ) , Euforismo (1929), Noísmo (1925), Atalayismo (1929). A lasting ingredient of this activity is the discovery of the ethnic roots of the C a r i b b e a n and popular rhythms, w h i c h please the senses, mainly through the negrista [Afro-Antillean] poetry of Palés M a t o s , the first n o t e w o r t h y poet to popularize the genre. In Uruguay, a fertile symbiosis of N a t i v i s m and Ultraism became the dominant aesthetic trend in the early 1920s, producing a moderate avantgarde tendency. Agua del tiempo, by Fernán Silva V a l d é s , enjoyed sudden, but fleeting fame. Ultraísmo w a s less widespread than in Argentina, but, unexpectedly, a late flowering left at least one b o o k w o r t h y of notice: El 125 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

hombre que se comió un autobús, by Alfredo M a r i o Ferreiro, the c o editor of Cartel, the most distinctive avant-garde magazine in the country. Other trends, such as Postumismo (1921; in the D o m i n i c a n Republic, p r o m o t e d by D o m i n g o M o r e n o Jiménez), an Ecuadorian variant of D a d a i s m (led by H u g o M a y o , also in 1921), and the coteries publicized by the reviews Flechas in Peru, and Los Nuevos in C o l o m b i a , a m o n g other peripheral manifestations, w e r e all symptomatic of activist attitudes prevailing at the times. T h e y had similar aspirations and provided a stimulating climate for the evolution of poetry in their countries, but suffered from inevitable ephemerality and faded a w a y . Suenan timbres by Luis Vidales is perhaps the first consciously avant-garde b o o k in Colombia. T h e Peruvian A l b e r t o H i d a l g o , an early follower of Futurism, pro moted Simplismo, a tributary tendency based on ultraist precepts, while living in Buenos Aires in 1922. H e also experimented w i t h typography, particularly the use of blank space, and attempted to reduce poetry to a string of metaphors, a characteristic shared by practically all the early Vanguardists. H e reiterated that "joining together the greatest number of metaphors in the least possible number of w o r d s , should be the aspiration of every p o e t " . A l t h o u g h H i d a l g o enjoyed w i d e recognition, in the end his lasting achievement m a y well be the fervor of his public activities and avant-garde w a y of life, a display that still d r a w s much interest today. A t the center of any account of Latin A m e r i c a n poetry is César Vallejo, w h o w r o t e the finest e x a m p l e of the early A v a n t - G a r d e , while transcend ing the limitations of the moverrient. Trilce is a major literary achieve ment, a hermetic and baffling b o o k - like the title itself - that makes challenging demands on the reader. It w a s a b o o k b o u n d to have a profound impact on Latin AmericanXliterary production; it appeared, coincidentally, in the same year as Ulysses and The Waste Land, w h o s e effect on their respective cultures is c o m p a r a b l e . Vallejo's vision stands poles apart from the perspective of the cosmopolitan H u i d o b r o - while H u i d o b r o writes poetry as an intellectual g a m e , a calculated, elitist and playful end-product, Vallejo, on the other hand, considers poetry as a process of self-discovery, entailing the acceptance of suffering and grief, and as a tool to reach out t o w a r d h u m a n solidarity. Vallejo lived tormented by the arbitrary cruelty of the w o r l d , profoundly anguished by social injustices and a metaphysical agony. Starkly direct verses from an early p o e m , " E s p e r g e s i a " [ " E x p l a n a t i o n " ] , from Los heraldos negros, sum up the sense of helplessness and fatality, the agonizing dimension of his poetry: Y o nací un día que Dios estuvo enfermo, grave. 126 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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[I was born on a day when G o d was sick, critically.] Spiritual desolation looms over the path of Vallejo's poetry: the death of his mother, the break-up of his h o m e and family circle, lost love, misery, and unjust imprisonment were early ordeals that confirmed in him the futility of life. In 1923, the year after publishing Trilce, he left Peru, never to return, and lived equally precarious years of deprivation and illness in Paris, until his death in 1938, as if besieged by a tragic destiny. A line from a posthumous p o e m , "Identidad y altura," collected in Poemas humanos [Human Poems], captures succinctly the rage w h i c h permeates his writing: " Q u i e r o escribir, pero me sale e s p u m a " ["I w a n t to write, but w h a t comes out is f o a m " ] . Haunting, disturbing images acquire a dramatic intensity and an authenticity seldom attained in literature. A l l avant-garde writers rise to the challenge to innovate, but while other poets were satisfied by merely rejecting traditional poetic idiom (verse lines, rhyme, strophe, conventional syntax, referential language, logical thought), and by finding a special language to heighten their modernity, Vallejo challenged the validity of high culture w i t h a frontal attack on all forms of elitism. His essential achievement as a poet resides in the creation of a personal language, aimed at undermining the limitations of modes of communication, to reveal the deepest emotions of primary existence. T h i s is a crucial difference: Vallejo is not simply an experimenter w i t h imagery or form, w h o searches for superficially impressive pyrotechnical effects, but rather a poet w h o seeks to revivify language in order to open unexplored states of consciousness. T h e obscurity w h i c h is characteristic of his poetry is the result of his pursuit of an inner vision, w h i c h does not conform to the usual organization of experience. Consequently, to break d o w n conventionalized responses, he ventured into irrationality, incoher ence, and incongruity, w h i c h render his w o r k arbitrary and incomprehen sible for the c o m m o n reader. H e epitomizes the type of writer Irving H o w e had in mind w h e n he stated, in Literary Modernism, that "the avant-garde abandons the useful fiction of the ' c o m m o n reader,' it demands instead the devotions of a c u l t . " Vallejo's V a n g u a r d i s m is still the subject of disagreement between scholars w h o cannot concur on the nature of his contribution, if any, to the advent of the movement. T h e fact that he disassociated himself from all the tendencies, appears to give some validity to the claims of those w h o negate his place in the Vanguardia. Furthermore, he never followed the precepts of any movement, rejecting them all. Nonetheless, he certainly w r o t e radically n e w and enduring avant-garde p o e m s . Trilce s h o w s that the literary procedures associated w i t h the V a n g u a r d became an essential factor of his poetry: he adapted the expressive possibilities of typography 127 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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and graphic design (phrases written vertically or in reverse, blank space, capitals), he distorted language by creating neologisms, he used colloqui alisms, archaisms and violently incongruous images, he used disjointed syntax by changing the grammatical function of w o r d s (made verbs from nouns and adverbs, nouns from prepositions and adverbs, etc.), and he developed a highly elliptic style by suppressing connectives, with no concern for coherent representation. Vallejo's disconcerting break w i t h linguistic and syntactic norms represents an attempt to destroy hierar chies and to develop a poetic language capable of expressing his inner vision, forcing the reader to find unity in the intense underlying emotion. A l t h o u g h his poetry differs greatly from the frivolous and playful image of the A v a n t - G a r d e , Vallejo emerged as an unprecedented innovator w h o carried the tendencies of the new sensibility (ruptures of continuity, dissonance, and incongruity) to their utmost limits. Vallejo w a s a puzzling and remarkably contradictory man: he denounced — but did not renounce — poetic experimentation and inven tion. T h e posture he adopted in journalistic pieces - for instance, in "Poesia n u e v a " (1926) and " C o n t r a el secreto profesional" (1927) reveals both his resistance to innovation and his hostility t o w a r d his o w n generation. H e had nothing but contempt for his contemporaries, w h o m he accused of being incapable of writing poetry concerned w i t h "genuine human inspiration." H e seemed distressed by the apparently imitative impulse of Latin A m e r i c a n poets, finding that they resembled a "simian nightmare," and g o i n g as far as to belittle Borges, N e r u d a , and M a p l e s A r c e and to accuse them of plagiarizing the techniques of European writers. Vallejo w a s concerned w i t h cultural authenticity and it is clear that he despised the Euro-centered cosmopolitanism of the Latin A m e r i can Vanguardia for its failure to develop a mode of expression indigenous to the continent. H e further emphasized his antagonism to all innovative coteries, w i t h o u t exception, in his disdainful articles on Surrealism (especially in " A u t o p s i a del Surrealismo" ["Autopsy of Surrealism"]), a movement that, he felt, did not make a single constructive contribution. A l t h o u g h he repudiated Surrealism as a doctrine, his affinity w i t h the Surrealists' quest for the lost dimension of language, by breaking d o w n rational barriers and disrupting consciousness, is clearly perceivable in his poetry. O f great significance w a s the appearance of a remarkable anthology of the new poetry, Indice de la nueva poesia americana, edited by three of the most prominent names of the era: H i d a l g o , H u i d o b r o , and Borges. T h e y clamored for the formation of " a n e w sensibility" and each provided a prologue-manifesto p r o m o t i n g his o w n ideas for poetic reformation. T h e anthology underlines the continental nature of the avant-garde process and the compilers' awareness of the emerging poetry throughout Latin 128 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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A m e r i c a . A s might be expected, the poetry of the editors' countries w a s over-represented (sixteen poets each for Argentina and Chile, and four teen for Peru, as compared to six for M e x i c o , out of a total of s i x t y - t w o poets included), but there is little doubt that the b o o k is a watershed w h i c h stands as a testimony to y o u n g writers enthusiastically pursuing poetic innovation. It enables the reader to assess the mutual influences a m o n g the various movements and trends, often bitter rivals in their artistic goals, but undeniably similar in their actual results. A l t h o u g h a sharp line of demarcation between the first and second stages of the Vanguardia is not to be found, this anthology signaled a turning point. T h e first phase of the Latin A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e w a s practically over by 1927. T h e virulence and scandalous behavior of the pioneering-/sras w a s progressively being replaced by eclectic movements and influential journals, w h i c h contributed greatly t o w a r d generating an intense cultural a w a k e n i n g in the continent. Amauta in Peru, Revista de Avance in C u b a , and Contemporáneos in M e x i c o appeared at exactly the right moment, w h e n art as shock value and as incendiary outburst had completed its cycle and the consolidation of the A v a n t - G a r d e w a s beginning to take on the attributes of an institutional alternative. T h e s e journals w e l c o m e d diverse tendencies in art and literature instead of being forums for the p r o m o t i o n of their o w n programs. Mariátegui w a s an advocate of ideologically committed art and of furthering the sociopolitical role of literature, thus renewing the connec tions between politics and literary-artistic movements established by the European precedents, from Futurism to Surrealism. His political convic tions - he w a s a professed M a r x i s t - made Amauta one of the few magazines anchored to a firm ideological base. H e intended to name it " V a n g u a r d i a , " but opted to incorporate the indigenous allusion in its title (the name means " w i s e m a n " or " c o u r t c o u n s e l o r " in Q u e c h u a ) , so that it could become a voice for the revindication of the autochthonous cultures. Mariátegui's essays on literature stressed the question of the subordina tion of art to the social revolution and denounced the dissolution of bourgeois culture. T h e art of the Vanguardia, he suggested, w a s a s y m p t o m of the crisis of a civilization, the "end of an e p o c h , " as he often stated. His main goal w a s to s h o w literature and politics to be dialectically connected, to associate all domains of cultural and civil life. In " A r t e , revolución, decadencia," (1926), he sums up his idea that art is not a diversion or an intellectual g a m e , independent from society: " N o aes thetics can reduce artistic creation to a question of technique. N e w techniques must correspond to a new spirit. If not, the only thing that changes is the ornamental cover, the decoration. A n d formal conquests are not enough to satisfy an artistic r e v o l u t i o n . " Amauta

maintained strong ties w i t h Indigenismo

and the literature of



LITERATURE

social protest, but it w a s also a forum for the various experimental A v a n t Gardists of the late 1920s in Peru. T h e magazine promoted, for instance, the w o r k of C a r l o s O q u e n d o de A m a t , author of a dadaist b o o k , Cinco metros de poemas, printed on a page, as a folded-up poster, exactly five meters long, as promised in the title, and of M a r t í n A d á n , w h o w r o t e " a n t i s o n e t o s , " and a b o v e all the novel La casa de cartón; it also particularly w e l c o m e d the French surrealist m o v e m e n t and its early Peruvian followers, such as Emilio A d o l f o Westphalen and César M o r o , w h o w r o t e most of his poetry in French, while living in Paris from 1925 to 1933, where he w a s the only Latin A m e r i c a n writer to participate in the surrealist movement. C o n t r a r y to Vallejo's sweeping rejection of Surrealism as a mere "recipe to write p o e m s , " M a r i á t e g u i considered the movement, in " E l grupo suprarrealista" ["The Surrealist G r o u p " ] (1926), " n o t a simple literary p h e n o m e n o n , but a c o m p l e x spiritual p h e n o m e n o n . N o t an artistic fashion, but a protest of the spirit," and he clearly deduced its historical relevance to contemporary literature and art. Revista de Avance w a s an equally significant focus of aesthetic debate, closely linked to the historical development of C u b a , but open to a crossfertilization of ideas, w i t h no partisan attachment to a specific creative current. L i k e Amauta, it combined cosmopolitanism and nationalism, w i t h o u t being at the vanguard of social change. In Latin A m e r i c a , only Contemporáneos w a s c o m p a r a b l y alert to the new artistic manifestations, w h i c h were studied within its covers w i t h perspicacity by Jorge M a ñ a c h , M a r t í C a s a n o v a s , Juan M a r i n e l l o , Félix Lizaso, and others; in addition, European authors and artists were regularly featured and the Latin A m e r i c a n experimental writers of those years were customarily reviewed. Its eclecticism w a s typical of the evolving sense and function of the A v a n t - G a r d e in the late 1920s, of the prevailing tendency of m o v e ments to be less theoretical, self-conscious, and radical, and to be primarily interested in developing a national cultural identity. Insurgent movements appeared late in C u b a and experimental activity lacked the aggressiveness of the early 1920s. Nevertheless, one of the most extreme trends in " p u r e " vanguard poetry, the celebrated jitanjafora, w a s formulated by M a r i a n o Brull in Poemas en menguante. It is an example of delightful virtuosity: sweeping aside all semantic barriers, he produced a type of verse w i t h a pleasing and rhythmic musical effect, attained by alliteration, o n o m a t o p e i a , and repetition. N e w w o r d s were invented based purely on sound, devoid of any meaningful context. It w a s a display of consummate artistry, playful and gratuitous, appealing " t o the senses and to fantasy," as A l f o n s o R e y e s remarked in his definitive study on the jitanj afora. T h e mixed cultural heritage of the C a r i b b e a n became a fertile field for literary experimentation. Afro-Antillean poetry, initiated in Puerto R i c o , 130 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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as I have noted, w e n t on to achieve greater prominence in C u b a , particularly w i t h N i c o l á s Guillen, w h o transformed a superficial genre into a literary achievement and an affirmation of the cultural ancestry of black Caribbeans. F r o m his earliest b o o k s , Motivos de son and Sóngoro Cosongo, written in the Spanish of black C u b a n s , he undermined classic notions of poetry w i t h an unexpected artistic turn. In a bold m o v e , he presented collective themes in a popular musical beat, the son, an o n o m a t o p o e i c , alliterative, and incantatory ritual chant. T h e adaptation of the sensual and percussive rhythms of the son as a means of poetic expression became his trademark. W i t h the next b o o k , West Indies Ltd., his poetry g r e w more overtly political and the seductive h a r m o n y of his verse gave w a y to an increasing concern w i t h racial prejudice and economic injustice. It is important to remember that popular and referential art w a s irreconcilable w i t h the premises of the A v a n t - G a r d e , w h i c h rejected any concrete historial dimension. Guillen, writing near the end of the movement, departs from mainstream Latin A m e r i c a n V a n guardism and initiates a displacement t o w a r d literature as social protest, as an expression of the ideals of a radicalism implicit in the term A v a n t G a r d e (originally a military metaphor, " a d v a n c e - g u a r d " ) and explicit in many European movements w h i c h combined aesthetic innovation w i t h social radicalism (notably Futurism, D a d a i s m , Surrealism, Expression ism, etc.). T h e question of the relationship of revolutionary art to social revolution is crucial w h e n reading Guillen. Clearly, his poetry belongs to the sociopolitical A v a n t - G a r d e , of a type w h i c h "stresses not only the idea of the interdependency of art and society, but also the doctrine of art as an instrument of social action and reform," as observed by R e n a t o Poggioli in The Theory of the Avant-Garde. A r o u n d 1928, new coteries of writers were also appearing in other countries, particularly in Venezuela and N i c a r a g u a . Centered around t w o journals, Elite (1925-1932) and Válvula (1928), aesthetic debate prolifer ated in Venezuela and subjected its literature to radical revision. In this respect, the pioneer efforts of A r t u r o Uslar Pietri and Julio G a r m e n d i a , in narrative, and José A n t o n i o R a m o s Sucre, in poetry, display an unmistak able commitment to revitalizing literature. In La torre de timón (1925) R a m o s Sucre's prose p o e m s still remain close to Symbolism, but the conversational syntax, oneiric and irrational images approach surrealist practices. In N i c a r a g u a , w e find the only deliberate programmatic grouping in Central A m e r i c a , re-enacting iconoclastic patterns reminiscent of the movements of the early 1920s. José C o r o n e l Urtecho prepared the w a y w i t h the publication in 1927 of " O d a a R u b é n D a r í o , " the earliest example of the o n g o i n g effort to break w i t h inherited traditions, a rejection of the greatest heritage in Latin A m e r i c a n poetry, that of D a r í o . 131 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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A s a consequence, other y o u n g writers, especially Joaquin Pasos and Pablo A n t o n i o C u a d r a joined him in deliberately unsettling the familiar literary categories. T h e y resurrected the distinctive features of the early A v a n t - G a r d e : they founded a g r o u p in 1 9 3 1 , under the title Vanguardia, and even an " A n t i - A c a d e m i a N i c a r a g ü e n s e " to rally followers, launch manifestos, display outrage in public, etc., until it ran its course in 1933. T h i s ferment of activity led to the development of a cultural renovation of prime importance, profoundly rooted in the vernacular dimensions of the country, while assimilating the distinctive character of the times. Poemas nicaragüenses by C u a d r a remains a first-rate e x a m p l e of literary skill. W h e n studying the Vanguardia, it is c o m m o n practice to reduce prose fiction to marginal footnotes in the history of Latin A m e r i c a n letters. F r o m our present literary vantage point, the c o m i n g of age around 1 9 2 6 1928 of an avant-garde narrative merits consideration in the larger context of twentieth-century literature. W h i l e the poets enjoyed w i d e spread recognition and even acclaim, the prose writers were (and are) neglected and little-read. T h e y were not involved - as were the poets - in self-promotional tactics to convert the reading public, nor were they active participants in the various literary movements. Often they were dismissed as whimsical and self-indulgent writers, w o r k i n g in the rarefied air of lyrical and self-reflexive exercises in technique. Y e t , there were genuine literary innovators in the 1920s, w h o s e influence on contemporary narrative remains largely ignored. Foremost a m o n g them are Felisberto Hernández (Uruguay), M a c e d o n i o Fernández (Argentina), R o b e r t o A r k (Argentina), M a r t í n A d á n (Peru), and Pablo Palacio (Ecuador), all of w h o m have recently received enthusiastic critical support. T h e y share w i t h other significant writers, namely Julio G a r m e n dia (Venezuela), Arqueles V e l a ( G u a t e m a l a - M e x i c o ) , José Félix Fuenm a y o r ( C o l o m b i a ) , and the Chilean and M e x i c a n poets turned novelists (Huidobro, N e r u d a , and the Contemporáneos), a mode of writing characterized by indeterminacy and the dissolution of the traditional narrative categories. T h e y detached themselves from the regionalista tradition, the mimetic and realistic representation of rural life then prevailing in the continent, abandoning the rendering of a coherent and definable experience. Rather, they emphasized introspection, reverie, discontinuity, a free-flowing inventive process, conversational syntax, and fragmentary and unstructured ordering of literary events. In the 1920s, w e witness the g r o w t h of fictional strategies that have shaped twentieth-century narrative practices: self-reflexive texts, metafiction, lyrical novels, parodie narrative, the non-fiction novel, the openended and unfinished w o r k , all radical challenges to the reader's logical habits of mind and briefly noted here. Hernández and Fernández - or rather, Felisberto and M a c e d o n i o as 132 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


implications

they are customarily called - are exemplary paradigms of the Vanguardia. Both write unclassifiable w o r k s and display a compulsion t o w a r d selfreflexiveness and experimentation w i t h the p o w e r s of imagination. M a c e d o n i o is the foremost practitioner of the text about nothing in particular. In Papeles de recienvenido he cannot tell a story w i t h o u t digressions, self-questionings, and capricious juxtapositions of chapters, leaving the text in a visibly incoherent and inconclusive form. T h e b o o k is a heterogeneous miscellany of unconnected fragments, loosely tied together by the misadventures of a recienvenido [newcomer] to the literary w o r l d . M a c e d o n i o encourages active participation on the part of readers, constantly d r a w i n g upon their inventive capacity and shaking them out of their passive reading habits. Likewise, Felisberto's fragmentary stories deviate from the conventions of the well-elaborated and structured artistic w h o l e , developing a truly original modality of writing, prompting ítalo C a l v i n o to claim that Felisberto " d o e s not resemble anyone. N o n e of the Europeans and none of the Latin A m e r i c a n s . " H e manipulates the reflexive dimension of vanguard fiction and deliberately flaunts the mechanisms of textual production. Even in his formative years - Fulano de tal, Libro sin tapas, La cara de Ana, etc. - a narrator a w a r e of the hypothetical nature of his point of view captures the incoherence of mental experiences, the unusual and disturbing relationships between characters and objects. H e effaces the limits between determinate and indeterminate elements and juxtaposes the attributes of the abstract and the concrete, of matter and spirit, lifting situations from their habitual function to create enigmatic and irreducible correspondences. Felisberto builds his stories exploiting to the utmost an animistic m o d e of perception, a procedure peculiar to the A v a n t - G a r d e , and a process of defamiliarization characteristic of the uncanny or neo-fantastic. In a similar w a y , the principles of dissociation, discontinuity, and disjunction are distinguishing features of the narrative of writers such as A d á n , Palacio, and G a r m e n d i a . La casa de cartón by A d á n , perhaps the best novel of the period, Un hombre muerto a puntapiés and Débora, by Palacio, the latter being the first Latin A m e r i c a n metafiction, and G a r m e n d i a ' s imaginative short stories, collected in La tienda de muñecos, exemplify the displacement of storytelling by self-reflexive disruptions of narrative structure and by a discontinuous, fragmented, and contextually dissonant fictional discourse. In the 1920s, it w a s fashionable for poets to attempt to write fictional texts. El habitante y su esperanza, by N e r u d a , introduces new patterns of perception and expression perfected in his poetry, as w e shall see later; H u i d o b r o ' s narrative -Mío Cid Campeador, Cagliostro, etc. - negates by means of p a r o d y the textual strategies of the realistic novel. M e a n w h i l e in 133 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

M e x i c o , El café de nadie, by the Estridentista V e l a , shares a m o o d of introspection and subjectivity w i t h a long series of novels written by the Contemporáneos - most notably, T o r r e s Bodet's Margarita de niebla, O w e n ' s Novela como nube, N o v o ' s El joven (1928), and Villaurrutia's Dama de corazones (1928). In lyrical fiction, the evanescence of exper ience is e v o k e d through images and figures, and action is substituted by the modulations of m e m o r y and by a flowing series of sensory perceptions. Return Ticket by N o v o merits special mention; written as a travel diary, it is a superb e x a m p l e of a non-fiction novel in Latin America. A t first glance, to include Arlt as an avant-garde writer may be considered an aberration. In El juguete rabioso and L o s siete locos [The Seven Madmen], he documents social injustices, class hostilities, deviant behavior, and the conflicts of marginality in the mean city streets. His portrayals of the l o w e r middle class appear to cling to standard norms of storytelling. Y e t , his rejection of elitism, gentility, and all forms of "literary" effects is a revisionary impulse. Arlt disconcerts the reader w i t h expressionistic distortions of reality, and, a b o v e all, w i t h the blunt authenticity of his colloquial and harsh language, repudiating any n o r m that stifles the direct rendering of urban life. T h e great creative period of the A v a n t - G a r d e comes to an end in 1935, w i t h N e r u d a ' s publication o f his second Residencia en la tierra. Like Vallejo, N e r u d a never w a s associated w i t h any of the movements that sprang up all over the continent, nor did he m a k e any strident proclama tion of modernity; both poets spurned the frivolous traits of the -isms, but internalized the innovative techniques inherent to the various movements. W i t h the printing - at age twenty - of his second and most popular b o o k , Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada [Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair], a melancholic farewell to lost love, it w a s clear that a major poetic voice had emerged. Immediately, h o w e v e r , he radically severed his dependency on traditional poetics and N e o - R o m a n ticism and sought n e w w a y s of relating experiences and perceptions. Responding to n e w stimuli for change w a s N e r u d a ' s fundamental creative propensity; he could be intensely intimate or militantly political; he w a s able to express the simplicity of elemental things or the c o m p l e x i t y of metaphysical despair, to be a chronicler of history, an epic voice of the N e w W o r l d or a conversational anti-poet - in short, to be a l w a y s in the vanguard of innovation. Tentativa del hombre infinito, a nocturnal flight into the subconscious and the oneiric in search of "superior m a n , " paralleling A n d r e Breton's belief that a "superior reality" can be achieved through the free use of verbal associations, as well as the p o e m s that N e r u d a began printing in journals on July of 1925 ( " G a l o p e m u e r t o " is apparently the first) and 134 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


implications

later collected in Residencia en la tierra, mark a turn t o w a r d a surrealist mode. Surrealism w a s then becoming increasingly dominant and " p o w e r fully contributed to shape the sensibility of our a g e , " as O c t a v i o Paz remarked in 1954. N e r u d a shatters the usual manner of portraying reality by transforming external correspondences and personal experiences into a dreamlike poetic construction. T h e art of N e r u d a lies in blending disjointed, illogical, and discontinuous images of a disintegrating w o r l d into a new w h o l e , apparently chaotic, but responding to a deep unity of vision and imagination. T h e surrealist manner of free association of images, plunging into the subconscious and the oneiric, free from the controls of reason, becomes a familiar trait of his poetry. N e r u d a ' s extreme introspection and anguished desolation find an appropriate expression in a modality that a l l o w s him to liberate the mind from objective representation and rhetorical confinements. In Residencia en la tierra, the incessant disintegration of the universe, sensorially experienced, asserts the omnipresence of the eroding effect of time. " E s t o y solo entre materias desvencijadas" ["I am alone a m o n g b r o k e n - d o w n substances"] w e read in " D é b i l del a l b a , " [ " W e a k from D a w n " ] and the irrepressible decay of things wearing a w a y and turning to dust becomes an obsessive trait. A s a result, his poems overflow with the corroded, the disjointed, the fragmented, the putrid, the wasted, reflecting dusty dreams, withered incentives, and the debasement of humanity in a bleak and crumbling w o r l d . T h e most striking feature of this bewildering mixture of heterogeneous elements is the b r e a k d o w n of traditional poetic " g o o d taste" and a de-hierarchization of literature. N e r u d a clarifies the underlying premise in his manifesto " S o b r e una poesía sin p u r e z a " [ " O n an Impure P o e t r y " ] , published in 1935 in Caballo verde para la poesía, the journal that he brought out in M a d r i d . A key paragraph reads: " A poetry as impure as a suit of clothes, as a b o d y , w i t h food stains and shameful attitudes, w i t h wrinkles, observations, dreams, vigils, prophecies, declarations of love and hate, beasts, jolts, idylls, political beliefs, denials, doubts, affirmations, and t a x e s . " W i t h o u t deliberately excluding any thing to broaden to an extreme the d o m a i n of his poetry, he wilfully gives a literary place to the ordinary, endorsing as a poetic the demythologizing of the aesthetic function of the w o r k of art. Central to avant-garde writing is the dissolution of traditional form, the exploration of its limits and possibilities. Consider " G a l o p e m u e r t o , " the opening p o e m of Residencia en la tierra, w h i c h illustrates N e r u d a ' s poetic process and sets the tone of the entire b o o k . T h e first stanza reads: C o m o cenizas, como mares poblándose, en la sumergida lentitud, en lo informe, o como se oyen desde el alto de los caminos cruzar las campanadas en cruz, 135 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

teniendo ese sonido ya aparte del metal, confuso, pesando, haciéndose polvo en el mismo molino de las formas demasiado lejos, o recordadas o no vistas, y el perfume de las ciruelas que rodando a tierra se pudren en el tiempo, infinitamente verdes. [Like ashes, like seas being populated, in the submerged slowness, in their formlessness, or as they are heard from the height of the roads the tolling bells crossing, having that sound already separated from the metal, confused, weighty, turning into dust in the same mill of forms to far away, or remembered or not seen, and the perfume of plums that, rolling to the ground, rot in time, infinitely green.] T h e p o e m begins with a simile w i t h o u t a referent, followed by an uninterrupted flow of incongruous and enigmatic images, around an undetermined subject, chaotically e v o k i n g the unfolding of an unformed and hermetic experience. T h e p o e m is an arresting example of N e r u d a ' s p a r a d o x i c a l fusion of disparate elements brought into disquieting n e w relationships. H e passionately recalls the dynamic and opposite tension in the endless process of renewal and attempts a synthesis through p a r a d o x , accumulating indiscriminate combinations of images d r a w n from natural forces, such as the fire and water (ashes and seas) of the first line and the plums rotting on the ground, yet infinitely green, of the last one. T h e p o e m does not develop syntactically t o w a r d a close, but juxtaposes incomplete and a-syntactical sentences (the stanza is a single open-ended phrase), a form-free flux of sensory impressions that liberates the imagination and disturbs the reader's expectations. T h i s flood of associations and ideas is predominant in the entire p o e m . Residencia en la tierra represents a significant b r e a k d o w n of established poetic structures: it features a radically different poetic modality, a disjointed, dissonant, and prosaic verse, flowing i n w a r d , self-reflexively, thus instituting a n e w diction in Latin A m e r i c a n poetry. Residencia en la tierra is N e r u d a ' s finest contribution to the literature of the A v a n t - G a r d e ; but a year after he published the second v o l u m e in 1935, while living in M a d r i d as a C o n s u l , there w a s a drastic change in history, and, as a result, in his social consciousness. In 1936, Fascism w a s taking over Europe and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil W a r deeply affected him, and equally outraged Vallejo in Paris. Filled w i t h moral indignation, both embraced a popular cause for social justice. Prime examples are, of course, N e r u d a ' s España en el corazón (1937) and Vallejo's posthumous 136 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


implications

España, aparta de mí este cáliz (1939), w h i c h stand at the crossroads of historical periods. Significantly, in a little-read article, " A p u n t e s para un estudio," Vallejo invented a new -ism to apply to N e r u d a and himself: Verdadismo, m a k i n g an appeal for recognition of the need for human values, along the lines emphasized in the name, " t r u t h i s m , " and opposed to poetry as an intellectual exercise. By then, in the N e w W o r l d , Guillen had written España: poema en cuatro angustias y una esperanza (1937) and had evolved t o w a r d poetry as social commitment, H u i d o b r o w a s practically silent, Borges w a s already writing ludic self-reflexive artifices and the militant groups had disbanded; in short, the historical A v a n t G a r d e w a s explicitly displaced by a period of consolidation and n e w departures. Nevertheless, their legacy of radical experimentation fores h a d o w s later developments in Latin A m e r i c a n literature, and each successive generation found in their w o r k an artistic paradigm and a challenge to their o w n creative ventures. T h e A v a n t - G a r d e has long been integrated into the mainstream of contemporary literature. In effect, a characteristic strategy associated w i t h the Vanguardists, their self-conscious explorations of the nature, function, possibilities, and limits of the creative act, provides a dominant focus for the aesthetic sensibilities of the postmodern age. If one considers that truly great writers such as Borges, N e r u d a , Vallejo, H u i d o b r o , Guillen, and Felisberto Hernández, to name but a few, are directly connected w i t h the premises of the A v a n t - G a r d e , the m o v e m e n t assumes far-reaching implications. A s a consequence, it seems justified to claim that the Vanguardia represents a turning point in Latin A m e r i c a n poetry and - arguably - narrative of the twentieth century. By creating n e w modes of expression and insisting on iconoclastic innovation, the V a n guardists altered the practice of writing and rendered possible the creative and critical receptivity to self-reflexive experimentalism that still reverberates in the diverse neo-avant-garde movements of our time. In retrospect, w i t h o u t the aesthetic activism of the Vanguardists in the 1920s there w o u l d be no modern literature in Latin A m e r i c a .


[ 4 ]

The literature of Indigenismo René Prieto

T h e history of colonial and republican A m e r i c a is also - in its margins, footnotes, and backpages — the history of the Indian. N o t of the Indian as he is but as white and mestizo writers from A l o n s o de Ercilla (1533—1594) to Ventura G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n (1886-1959) and José M a r i a A r g u e d a s ( 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 6 9 ) have chosen to typecast, vilify or idealize him. T h e inexorable modification of the first Americans begins with the Arcadian portrayal of Fray Bartolomé de las C a s a s (1474-1566), a fanciful notion that provides the germ for Rousseau's noble savage t w o centuries later. T h i s process of transfiguration is not the only feature that harnesses together the colonial perception w i t h that of our contemporaries, h o w ever. C u r i o u s as it may seem, almost all of the elements that were to typify the literature of Indigenismo [Indigenism] in the 1840s are already in evidence in the chronicles of the C o n q u e s t and the literature of the early colonial period. T h e blend of romantic idealization and social indictment favoured by Las C a s a s and El Inca Garcilaso ( 1 5 3 9 - 1 6 1 6 ) , A l o n s o de Ercilla's vision of warring braves and passionate heroines, the picturesque traditions and unprecedented myths portrayed in the w o r k of Bernal D i a z del Castillo (i496?-i584?) and Bernardo de Balbuena (1568-1627) enter as one unit into the fiction of authors w h o , since Independence, had been avidly searching for colorful imagery to portray w h a t they saw as the originality of A m e r i c a . A n d , since independence from Spain came at a time w h e n the romantic movement held s w a y , a g o o d many of the Indian protagonists during the first three quarters of the nineteenth century developed as exotic objects, faithful reflections of Chateaubriand's and Walter Scott's literary conceits. A t the same time that this chimerical current w a s bringing to life picture-postcard views of the A m e r i c a n continent, a handful of authors w a s m a k i n g resolute attempts to vindicate its native inhabitants. It is this focus on social injustice, this determination to champion the cause of a 138 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature of Indigenismo disfranchised race, that distinguishes the literature of Indigenismo from the w o r k of indianista [Indianist] authors writing in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Writers of both tendencies share a compassion for the conquered cultures of A m e r i c a but while the Indianistas couple a purely sentimental interest w i t h an attachment to the traditions of the past, the Indigenistas dwell on social protest and direct their attention to the contemporary rural Indian w h o m they v i e w from the urban perspec tive characteristic of the bourgeois novel. A l t h o u g h agreement prevails regarding the focus and sphere of action of Indianismo [Indianism] and Indigenismo, opinions differ as to the lineage and idiosyncrasies of both movements. For instance, until very recently, critics hailed the prototypal Aves sin nido [Birds Without a nest. A Story of Indian Life and Priestly Oppression in Peru] by C l o r i n d a M a t t o de T u r n e r (i852-1909) as the first indigenista novel. H o w e v e r , in a groundbreaking study entitled The Andes Viewed from the City: Literary and Political Discourse on the Indian in Peru (1848-1930), Efrain Kristal demonstrates that N a r c i s o Aréstegui's 1848 saga of lust and murder, El Padre Horán, outstrips M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s classic by over forty years. Questions also arise concerning generic boundaries. Is Aves sin nido the c r o w n i n g e x a m p l e of Indianismo, as C o n c h a M e l é n d e z suggests in her foundational La novela Indianista en Hispanoamérica (1832-1889), or, is it, as Julio Rodriguez-Luis (in Hermenéutica y praxis del Indigenismo: La novela Indigenista de Clorinda Matto a José María Arguedas) and Seymour M e n t ó n (in " L a novela del indio y las corrientes literarias") respectively maintain, the first documented w o r k of the Indigenismo} W h a t d o w e m a k e of more recent w o r k s such as the controversial Hombres de maíz [Men of Maize] by M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias (1899-1974), or the five-volume saga, " L a Guerra Silenciosa" (1977-1979) by M a n u e l Scorza (1928-1983), w o r k s w h i c h , stylistically speaking, are radically different from the canonic examples of the m o v e m e n t although no less bent upon advocating Indian rights than the staunchest of their predecessors? T h e differences and similarities, range and scope of these literary tendencies c o m e sharply into focus w h e n w e marshal the movements portraying the Indian into three phases - Indianismo, o r t h o d o x Indige nismo, and Neoindigenismo - in keeping with T o m á s G . Escajadillo's prescription (1971). D r a w n to the picturesque and spectacular aspects of the A m e r i c a n continent and its autochthonous inhabitants, authors from the first g r o u p prefer to set their fiction in the past, at a time before Indian civilizations had been tainted by European culture. T h e t w o classic examples of this tendency are Cumandá: o un drama entre salvajes by Juan L e ó n M e r a (1832-1894), a tale of star-crossed lovers w h o turn out to be estranged siblings, and the loosely historical Iracema lenda do Ceará 139 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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[Iracema, the Honey Lips], another romance of impossible love written by Brazilian José de Alencar (1829-1877) and set in the lush R i o G r a n d e del N o r t e region of Brazil. T h e child issuing from the interracial union in Iracema, a prelusive mestizo in the romantic literature of the N e w W o r l d , emblematizes in every w a y the uncertain destiny of the countless men and w o m e n w h o are alienated in the country of their birth. In fact, it is this p a r a d o x of the stranger in a land made strange that constitutes the essence of all N e w W o r l d literature dealing with the Indian and that best describes their social condition. T h e s e social conditions are not portrayed as a problem in literature until well into the nineteenth century. Instead, as C o n c h a M e l é n d e z points out, the subjects that most concern Central and South A m e r i c a n authors during the Revolutionary period are: anti-Hispanic feelings, an exultant sense of optimism about the future of A m e r i c a , and an attachment to indigenous traditions, especially those of the Inca. W i t h one exception, the twenty-four novels studied by M e l é n d e z are most definitely not w o r k s of social protest, even w h e n they share a compassion for the conquered Indian and a sentimental interest in the folkloric aspects of his culture. Such interest is a logical offshoot of independence. H a v i n g made a historical break from Hispanic rule, authors begin to consider the mother cultures of A m e r i c a as an attractive lineage for the identity of the budding republics. It is to these cultures that writers of the post-revolutionary period turn w i t h an almost child-like enthusiasm. Unfamiliar as they are with the actual realities of Indian civilization - A m e r i c a n ethnology and anthropology are then in their infancy - they idealize the aboriginal inhabitants. Since such idealization is in marked contrast with the deplorable living conditions of the contemporary inhabitants of the N e w W o r l d , they exalt the values of the ancient indigenous cultures and decry the u n m a k i n g of their contempor aries, an attitude w h i c h translates as an insensitivity to the present in their w o r k s of literature. T h e indigenous past that the Indianista authors invent is glorious while the present is simply dismissed from their schemes. T h i s attitude underlies the conception of t w o novels w h o s e plots are set in preCortesian times: J. R. Hernandez's Azcaxochitl o la flecha de oro and the Y u c a t e c Eulogia Palma y Palma's La Hija de Tutl-Xiu (1884). In these w o r k s as well as in the deservedly famous Enriquillo (first published in a complete edition in 1882) by M a n u e l de Jesús G a l v á n of Santo D o m i n g o , the authors infuse their characters w i t h a typically romantic love of liberty and, in the case of the latter w o r k , g o as far as casting the hero as a patriotic s y m b o l . T h e e p o n y m o u s Enriquillo, victorious cacique w h o launches a courageous revolt in order to free his people from a humiliating vassalage is a case in point of the process of idealization typical of Indianista literature. 140 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature o f Indigenismo A s the romantic school recast the long-standing tradition of c o m p a s sion for the conquered Indian, the developing naturalist tendency fueled by the impact of positivist theories sets off a countercurrent to compassion during the last sixty years of the nineteenth century. A s French influence penetrates and permeates the rapidly developing capitals of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, the romantic portrait of the Indian becomes substituted by a g r o w i n g sense that this disfranchised, sapped, and senile race is an obstacle to national progress. It is this vision of a degenerate and vicious breed that authors such as Esteban Echeverría (1805-1851) and D o m i n g o Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888) respectively translate in " L a c a u t i v a " (in Rimas) and in Civilización i barbarie: vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga, aspecto físico, costumbres i ábitos de la República Argentina, w o r k s w h i c h postulate the racial and cultural superiority of Europe and storm against "native s a v a g e r y . " T h e n , in 1848, alongside the conflicting tendencies to idealize the Indian on the one hand and d o w n g r a d e him on the other, a novel written by a Peruvian educator turned military hero introduces a w h o l e n e w perspec tive and changes forever the course of fiction portraying native A m e r i cans. In El Padre Horán, N a r c i s o Aréstegui portrays the Indian as a social dilemma for the first time since El Inca G a r c i l a s o ' s vindication of his race. T h e novel's action is based on an incident that occurred in Peru in 1836. A respected priest, Father O r o s , murdered the daughter of a well-to-do C u z c o family and w a s brought to trial. Building on the gruesome details, Aréstegui paints the portrait of a greedy and lecherous man of the cloth w h o benefits from free Indian labor and caps a life of excess and abuse by raping and killing an innocent girl. A s it turns out, the stuff of melodrama is but a stalking horse upon w h i c h impassioned political discourse fares forth. A s Efrain Kristal indicates in The Andes Viewed from the City, the Indian is played as " a rhetorical p a w n " in the debate between the landed oligarchy and sectors of the political and cultural intelligentsia in all five countries where Indigenismo proliferates: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, M e x i c o , and G u a t e m a l a . In the case of Aréstegui's novel, the excesses of Father H o r á n illustrate h o w the incubi of commerce (and, by extension, of national development) are individuals w h o abuse the feudal system. T h e Peruvian author strongly advocates a protected labor force and hopes for a fully employed society that is justly remunerated for its efforts and will, in turn, participate in the cycle of production and consumption w h i c h bolsters agriculture, c o m m e r c e , and national progress. Kristal goes on to demon1

1

Needless to say, novels in defense of the Indian h a v e been written in other Latin A m e r i c a n countries. A case in point is Donde haya Dios (1955) by A r g e n t i n i a n author A l b e r t o R o d r i g u e z . It is in the five countries mentioned a b o v e , h o w e v e r , that the literature featuring native A m e r i c a n s has proliferated sufficiently to w a r r a n t speaking in terms o f a literary tendency.



LITERATURE

strate h o w Aréstegui's views on his country's native inhabitants are really a reflection of certain political stances taken by Peruvian liberals w h o vindicated the Indian by w o r k i n g to curb the abuses of a feudal order. T h e same liberal decrees calling for the exoneration of the Indian labor force enacted by R a m ó n Castilla (President of Peru in 1 8 4 5 - 1 8 5 1 and, again, between 1855 and 1864) inform the little-known Sé bueno y serás feliz by Ladislao G r a n a ( 1 8 1 7 - 1 8 6 2 ) , a novel first published in installments in the influential La Revista de Lima in i860. Besides being profoundly didactic, G r a ñ a ' s novel is originally conceived as a story within a story in w h i c h frequent incursions into the past alternate with observations about contemporary Peruvian history and politics. It reports the woeful tale of José H u a m á n , a kind, h a r d - w o r k i n g Indian w h o s e life is practically destroyed by a greedy governor w h o earns his wealth through murder, exploitation, and deceit. In the end, following one of the narrator's sallies against those w h o abuse native A m e r i c a n s , José's virtue is at long last rewarded; in the last published installment of Sé bueno y serás feliz, the Indian hero becomes a small property o w n e r while the callous governor w h o wastes illegally made wealth dies alone, leaving his concubine and child destitute. In advocating the emancipation of native Americans from forced labor and certain kinds of tribute, Aréstegui and G r a n a were no doubt mirroring the economic concerns of contemporary landowners w h o supported these reforms, as Kristal suggests, because "they needed to obtain a labor force in order to increase c o m m e r c e " (p. 30). In the long run, h o w e v e r , e c o n o m i c motives turn out to be the springboard for a n e w kind of social engineering. H a n d in hand w i t h the need to free a labor force for commerce comes a more altruistic concern w i t h civic ideals, a sort of Benthamism that is no less devoted to the c o m m o n w e a l for being utilitarian. T h e s e civic ideals are upheld by a brave new breed of enlightened individuals driven by an apparently incorrupt zeal for improvement. T h i s type of crusader in favor of Indian rights surfaces as a narrator as early as El Padre Horán but does not c o m e into its o w n as a character until C l o r i n d a M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s classic trilogy: Aves sin nido, Indole, and Herencia. In spite of its romantic trappings and tendency to idealize indigenous inhabitants, the first of these - an injunction against the oppression of the "trinity" made up of Priest, Judge, and G o v e r n o r - is a vehement barrage against the forces that exploit native A m e r i c a n s . Profoundly influenced by the writings of her fellow countryman, M a n u e l G o n z á l e z Prada (1848-1918), M a t t o de T u r n e r translates her mentor's social preoccupations into fiction and produces a c o m m a n d i n g indictment. T h e "trinity" she describes had been damned w i t h mordant irony in a novel published four years earlier: José T o r r e s y L a r a ' s (whose 142 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature o f Indigenismo pen name w a s Itolararres) La Trinidad del Indio o Costumbres del Interior. T h i s w o r k should be included a m o n g the early examples of indigenista literature even though it focuses on the abuse and b a c k w a r d ness of the "trinity" in a typical A n d e a n t o w n rather than on the Indian and his pitiful situation. It is a curious mixture in w h i c h elements from M e n i p p e a n satire and A e s o p ' s Fables are brought together in order to m o c k the grossly exaggerated foibles of the corrupt oligarchy ruling over t o w n and country. M o r e curious, even, than the novel itself is that such an iconoclastic tirade could have seen the light, a fact that can only be explained as an extraordinary legacy of the W a r of the Pacific (i 879-1883) w a g e d between Chile and Peru. N o t the most immediately o b v i o u s o u t c o m e of this debacle w a s the appalling state of backwardness that shackled the north A n d e a n republic. Underdevelopment w a s blamed on Peru's precarious social structure, namely that the largely Indian population w a s excluded from the mainstream of national life - a life controlled by a tight-fisted oligarchy. T h i s belief and the need to recast such an obsolete and ineffectual distribution of p o w e r impelled the most revolutionary author of the period, M a n u e l G o n z á l e z Prada, to take a stand against w h a t he labelled the " p u s " infecting Peruvian society. A l t h o u g h an heir to one of Peru's patrician families, G o n z á l e z Prada w a s soon spearheading a g r o u p of idealists and intellectuals w h o wished to take a more active part in political life. T h e i r immediate goal? T o redress the social imbalance that hampered national development. T h e aristocrat turned Socialist t o o k to the p o d i u m as well as to the pen, published compelling p r o p a g a n d a in favor of progress and Indian rights and actually campaigned in the n e w l y formed party, La Unión Nacional. N e v e r one to sit still or limit his sphere of action, Peru's new-fledged militant poet founded the C í r c u l o Literario in L i m a in 1886 w i t h the aim of producing a committed and future-minded literature that w o u l d raise national consciousness. It w a s through this C í r c u l o that he met a y o u n g w i d o w freshly arrived from C u z c o , C l o r i n d a M a t t o de Turner. A t the time, M a t t o had already published a collection of Tradiciones cuzqueñas (1884-1886) aimed at capturing - like the Tradiciones peruanas (1872-1883) of R i c a r d o Palma (1833-1919) - the essence of the past, a fact w h i c h demonstrates her o n g o i n g interest in all matters regarding Peru. H o w e v e r , after meeting G o n z á l e z Prada and joining the Círculo Literario, this interest became focused on the need to rehabilitate the Indian and incorporate him into the mainstream of national life, objectives that this typical representative of the emerging industrial elite w a s able to voice as editor of the influential El Ferú Ilustrado and through the no less influential Aves sin nido. N o one denies C l o r i n d a M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s pride of place, even if her 143 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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seminal trilogy has been showered w i t h more praise for w h a t w a s long thought to be its pioneering position as the first w o r k of Indigenismo than for any intrinsic merit it may have. Y e t the fact that a novel like Aves sin nido is romantic and quaint (it includes c o o k i n g recipes and household hints) should not detract from its originality. Its author not only outlines the social dilemma of the Indian in contemporary Peruvian society, she also - and this is a crucial step in the development of the indigenista novel - portrays her Indian characters as individuals. M a t t o de Turner w a s not a pioneer, h o w e v e r ; she acts as a watershed channeling theoretical concerns and topical situations set forth in other mediums and formats. N o t only the role played by Indians but, actually, the entire blueprint for Aves sin nido can be traced to a remarkable w o r k , "Si haces mal no esperes b i e n , " written by an Argentinian w o m a n : Juana M a n u e l a Gorriti (1819-1892). In their respective w o r k s of fiction, both M a t t o de T u r n e r and Gorriti denounce the oppression of native A m e r i cans by an abusive feudal order and dramatize the fatal attraction between members of different races w h o turn out to be half-siblings. In Aves sin nido, as in " S i haces mal no esperes b i e n , " the contemporary Indian - neither Inca prince nor Aztec w a r r i o r - h a s a face and a name. " O n e - u p p i n g " the w o r k of her predecessor, h o w e v e r , M a t t o de T u r n e r introduces — in the strong-minded M a r i n couple and their unshrinking friend M a n u e l - a new type of criollo hero, one w h o neither perceives nor treats the Indian as a picturesque (and therefore alien) phenomenon but, rather, as a human being with very real problems. Solutions to these problems can be found, moreover, provided just men and w o m e n are willing to fight in favor of the underdog and, as do the M a r i n s , to introduce Indians to a culture they had been excluded from up to that point. In matters of character development and distribution of roles M a t t o de Turner once again turns to other sources. In this respect, she complies w i t h the three types of Peruvian citizens that her mentor G o n z a l e z Prada had inventorized: the enlightened and free individuals (such as the M a r i n couple), the city folk w h o waste wealth and the rural oligarchy w h o amass profits at the expense of Indians (Pascual the priest and D o n Sebastian the governor), and, finally, the uneducated Indian masses. Inasmuch as her pedagogical zeal is concerned, M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s trilogy can again be said to hark back to an earlier model; in this case, G r a n a ' s Se bueno y serds feliz. A s her predecessor had done, M a t t o de T u r n e r had the aim of enlightening readers as to the hardships of the unjustifiably tormented. T o this effect, Aves sin nido provides a beha vioral guide that illustrates w a y s and means to redress social injustice. O n e of the most interesting and certainly one of the most original features of M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s plot is the a c c o m m o d a t i o n and recognition of the 144 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature of Indigenismo kind of racial integration she advocated, for instance, in an editorial addressed to President Andrés A v e l i n o Cáceres in El Perú Ilustrado: " W e call for foreign immigration that can mend our country through the mixture of b l o o d , " she declared w i t h a vehemence that w o u l d cost her dearly under the next administration and finish by forcing her into exile. But long before that time, she translated into fiction her progressive beliefs by having the white, bourgeois, and enlightened Fernando M a r i n and his wife Lucia adopt the orphan daughters of the Indians Juan and M a r c e l a Y u p a n q u i while their friend M a n u e l , stepson of the governor, falls in love w i t h the eldest of the girls. Even though their marriage is impossible (they turn out to be siblings), isn't M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s didactic trilogy opening the d o o r to cultural and racial mestizaje as a viable solution for Peru's problems? T h e contrast w i t h Sarmiento's m u c h more successful racist campaign, published scarcely forty years earlier, amply demonstrates h o w extraordinarily future-minded C l o r i n d a M a t t o de T u r n e r really w a s . Aves sin nido is more than a transitional w o r k , much more than a bridge between Indianismo and Indigenismo. It is a m o n g the forerunners of a militant breed of social protest w h o s e message and method hark back to the indignant accusations of Las C a s a s and El Inca G a r c i l a s o . Y e t even M a t t o de T u r n e r w a s not a l w a y s unprejudiced. H e r trilogy suffers from three preconceptions that A n t o n i o C o r n e j o Polar outlines in his insightful Literatura y sociedad en el Perú: La novela indigenista. First and foremost, the solutions she finds to the Indians' dilemma are not collective; in her novels only a handful of Indians manage to escape a miserable destiny. Second, her perspective is entirely moral; the Indians' suffering is a result of the first families' unworthiness and certainly not connected to the very real problem of land ownership. T h i r d , M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s solution to the Indian's quandary is, quite simply, to stop being an Indian and b e c o m e assimilated into Western civilization through a process of education that will eventually strip the Indian race of its o w n culture. H o w e v e r , the fact that she w a s not w h o l l y unprejudiced does not mean that she w a s not progressive. M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s attitude and approach were so ahead of their time, in fact, that they were not taken up again in fiction until well after the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n of I Q I O w h e n Latin A m e r i c a n authors, saturated w i t h the aestheticizing tendency of Modernismo [Modernism], turned once again t o w a r d the a l w a y s elusive question of identity. Starting around 1 9 1 9 , w i t h the publication of Raza de bronce by the Bolivian historian and sociologist Alcides A r g u e d a s (1879—1946), the Indian comes into v o g u e in literature for the first time since its romantic revival almost a century earlier. By that time, the influential writings of G o n z á l e z Prada and his most faithful ally, Hildebrando C a s t r o P o z o (1890-1945) had influenced an entire generation of intellectuals. 145 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Born like G o n z á l e z Prada into a family of wealthy land o w n e r s , C a s t r o P o z o w a s soon appalled by the economic situation w h i c h shackled the Indian population of his native Peru. In 1916, he published an important collection of short stories, Celajes de Sierra, where he exposed w h a t he had experienced during years of contact w i t h the Indian communities. T o this experience he brought to bear the stock of information acquired as Chief of Indian Affairs of the Ministry of D e v e l o p m e n t and published a crucial study entitled Nuestra Comunidad Indígena (1918). A t this time, Peru entered an era of social and political turmoil; the theoretical concerns of M a r x , Lenin, and Engels k n e w w i d e appeal a m o n g intellectuals after the resounding triumph of the Russian R e v o l u t i o n . Socialism became particularly seductive to countries that had a readymade apparatus of social protest and a burning cause to defend. T h e struggle for Indian rights in the five Central and South A m e r i c a n republics that had the largest indigenous populations w a s translated into a litera ture of social protest geared to redressing the predicaments of native Americans. Alcides A r g u e d a s had begun his stirring call to arms as early as 1904 under the tentative title Wata-Wara (the name of the novel's heroine and victim), but revised and published it fifteen years later, giving it the title w e k n o w today. Raza de bronce is the second rung - f o l l o w i n g the phase that concludes w i t h Aves sin nido - in the ladder of Indigenismo; it connects M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s conjunctive w o r k to the second indigenista generation c o m p o s e d of Enrique L ó p e z Albújar (1852-1966), Jorge Icaza ( 1 9 0 6 1978), Jesus L a r a (1898-1980), and Ventura G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n . W h a t its author adds to M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s conception is a more profound k n o w l e d g e of Indian customs and a comprehensive focus on their lives. O n the other hand, A r g u e d a s streamlined and oversimplified M a t t o de T u r n e r ' s distribution of roles. If, in her indigenista novel, there are g o o d Whites, bad W h i t e s , and Indians, in Raza de bronce character portrayal (as w a s to become the case w i t h most w o r k s of the period) is n a r r o w l y and unrealistically binary, divided between g o o d and evil corresponding, generally speaking, to Indians and non-Indians. T h e one apparent exception to this rule of t w o in Raza de bronce is a character named Suárez - a flagrant p a r o d y of the modernist poet - w h o turns out to be effete and ineffectual w h e n it comes to actually defending the Indians instead of idealizing them in capricious portraits. Readers of the novel cannot help w o n d e r i n g if A r g u e d a s ' s o w n characterization is not, in fact, as stylized and unrealistic as Suárez's. Certainly the Indians' analysis of the p o w e r structure and their doubts concerning the potential hazards of the white man's education are blatant transpositions of the author's o w n thoughts and perspective. But some measure of stylization should not detract from A r g u e d a s ' s very real 146 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature o f Indigenismo success in enlisting the reader's sympathy in favor of native Americans. His A n d e a n saga - the tale of a y o u n g Indian w o m a n w h o is raped and accidentally killed by the landowner's son and a handful of his friends - is profoundly disturbing. W h e n , at the novel's end, the Indians revolt and burn the l a n d o w n e r ' s house, it is impossible not to condone their actions. In fact, Raza de bronce might well be considered the first South A m e r i c a n novel that actively politicizes the reader by suggesting that the answer to the dilemma of the Indian race - depicted as a c o m m u n i t y and not as isolated individuals - m a y be no other than violent action. Unlike Alcides A r g u e d a s , a handful of writers from this second generation of Indigenistas were loath to c h a m p i o n social unrest. In his Cuentos andinos and Nuevos cuentos andinos, the versatile Peruvian judge and author, Enrique L ó p e z Albújar, focused on the p s y c h o l o g y and behavior of the Indian and not on the likelihood of an imminent social rebellion. Despite his lack of revolutionary zeal, L ó p e z Albújar w a s , in the w o r d s of C i r o Alegría, the first to create flesh and b l o o d Indian characters in the literature of Indigenismo. His experience as judge in the hill t o w n of H u a n u c o distinctly informed his narrative o u t l o o k , w h i c h is to say that many of the Indian characters in the Cuentos andinos were directly or indirectly involved in criminal situations. G i v e n this narrative penchant, the emphasis w a s on individual cases, on anecdotes that revealed Indian character rather than on social systems. L ó p e z Albújar's Indian p r o t a g o nists tend to be violent and, for better or for w o r s e , they are a l w a y s capable of action. T h i s attitude w a s in sharp contrast with the passive protagonists of M a t t o de T u r n e r or of Ventura G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n , v i e w e d , these latter, from a d o w n r i g h t racist perspective. F r o m the beginning, Ventura and his brother Francisco made no bones about their prejudice. Ventura saw no w a y for the Indian to participate in politics and w o n d e r e d h o w one could " b u i l d a bridge between t w o races w i t h o u t connections?" (Ortega, Ventura García Calderón, 128). H e w r o t e one novel and over t w o score of short stories that were o v e r w h e l m ingly well received (he and his brother were even nominated for a joint N o b e l Prize by a group of eminent sociologists that included Lucien LévyBruhl). His short stories set in Peru were largely inspired by his o w n experience as a frustrated prospector roaming across the A n d e s ; they portray a variety of social types and vividly describe a quasi-feudal code of behavior in w h i c h honor and a sense of duty play a major part. A m o n g those included in La venganza del cóndor, the narrator often transcribed songs in Q u e c h u a and s h o w e d himself to be d r a w n to the natives' idiosyncrasies, although merely as a cool and distant observer since he found this race cruel, stubborn, and impossible to understand. Indians were totally alien to him and, as such, ungraspable. Furthermore, given their innate and profound savagery (Ventura's brother, Francisco, warns 147 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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about the cannibalistic practices that endure a m o n g some groups of Indians in his famous sociological study published in French, Le Pérou contemporain), the white man must m a k e use of violence in an attempt to - if not civilize - at least control the people that he referred to as belonging to a " v a n q u i s h e d " and " r e s i g n e d " race. W i t h the publication of Jorge Icaza's Huasipungo and, most particu larly, of the unsettling El mundo es ancho y ajeno [Broad and Alien is the World] by C i r o Alegría (1909-1967), the tradition of rousing political portraits inaugurated by N a r c i s o Aréstegui and continued in the twentienth century by Alcides A r g u e d a s t o o k a further step. T h e plot of Icaza's novel is very similar to C i r o Alegría's: in both instances Indians are forcefully driven out of traditionally c o m m u n a l lands. H o w e v e r Alegría, w h o had spent his childhood on his grandfather's country estate, gave a more accurate v i e w of Indian life than his colleague from Ecuador. El mundo es ancho y ajeno is divided into t w o parts, the first of w h i c h can be categorized as a cycle of defeat (under R o s e n d o M a q u i , emblem of Indian tradition, c o m m u n a l values, and the past); and the second, as a cycle of hope (under Benito C a s t r o w h o brings to the ancestral c o m m u n a l values the advantages of progress learned in the white man's w o r l d ) . In both novels - Icaza's and A l e g r í a ' s - the Indian is demonstrably ineffec tual w h e n it comes to battling in a society ruled by a white establishment. Y e t while the former's characters just run themselves into the ground, the latter's are s h o w n the path to salvation. T h i s path is simply a dramatiza tion of the political p r o g r a m hailed by the left-wing APR A party - Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana - w h o s e leader, V i c t o r R a ú l H a y a de la T o r r e (1895-1979), advocated an alliance between w o r k e r s and intellectuals. T h e apristas saw in the c o m m u n a l structure basic to the Incario a predisposition or, more exactly, a fertile ground for Socialism. H o w e v e r , in order to bring traditional communities into the present, the Indian had to be taught the culture w h i c h governed his country. T h i s is exactly w h a t the character of Benito C a s t r o w a s charged w i t h in El mundo es ancho y ajeno. Because Benito had been forced to leave the c o m m u n i t y and see the w o r l d , he becomes wise to its w a y s . U p o n his return, seventeen years later, he set out to change the archaic beliefs that hinder the c o m m u n e of R u m i from entering into the twentieth century. A l t h o u g h he meets w i t h a great deal of rejection from the strongly traditional elders, the n e w order and truth he represents are, in the end, recognized by the comuneros. Benito is eventually elected m a y o r and the c o m m u n i t y k n o w s prosperity under his direction. H o w e v e r prosperity does not last in a w o r l d ruled by the greed of landowners. T h e Indians of R u m i - as is the case w i t h the c o m m u n i t y depicted in Icaza's Huasipungo - are massacred d o w n to the last man w h e n the troops are sent in. 148 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature o f Indigenismo T h e endings of both novels are c o m p a r a b l e and yet, thematically speaking, they are very different. Icaza's Indian lives sordidly and dies fruitlessly. H e finds neither hope nor help for pain in an alien w o r l d that exploits him w i t h o u t respite. In contrast, El mundo es ancho y ajeno provided the blueprint for salvation in its aprista slate: to preserve the c o m m u n a l values of the past while learning the political and economic structure of the present, in order to end, once and for all, the selfd a m a g i n g isolation under w h i c h Indians had taken umbrage since the Conquest. T h e moral of Alegria's drama rings clear: G o d saves those w h o save themselves. T h e Indian must step into modern society of his o w n accord with the help of those w h o feel the injustice of his situation. A n d w h a t is an Indian that has learned the w a y s of the white man's world? A cholo, an indio ladinizado, the heroes of the mestizo sagas that begin to proliferate after the 1930s, written by the third generation of Indigenistas. W e have here, as A n g e l R a m a points out in his important Transculturación narrativa en America Latina, a literature written for and by the l o w e r middle or mestizo classes that are rising socially and economically and feel hampered by the well-rooted and all-controlling landowners. T h e 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s were trying times for Peru, M e x i c o , and G u a t e m a l a , a time w h e n these countries lived through hazardous changes. T h e highlands of Peru, for instance, of difficult access since the days of the C o n q u e s t , became approachable after a massive road-building campaign in the last years of the 1920s. C o m m e r c i a l culture came k n o c k i n g at the d o o r of the last bastions of Indian life, some living in a state of semi-isolation since the C o n q u e s t . W i t h roads came progress, medicines, b o o k s , but also the destruction of c o m m u n a l roots and traditional w a y s w h i c h had cemented together the rural communities since the days of the Inca empire. It w a s in an attempt to preserve these cultures that the generation of Indigenistas of w h i c h José M a r i a A r g u e d a s w a s a member shifted its focus of interest from the transcendent civilizations of the past to the fast disappearing ones of the present. T h e dramatic cultural chasm, the gaping w o u n d w h i c h kept Westerners and Indians apart racially, economically, politically, and philosophically w a s being stitched w i t h rough kitchen thread and the needle of " p r o g r e s s . " W h a t A n g e l R a m a refers to as the process of mesticismo had begun, even if the combination of cultures w a s to be more counterpoint than harmony. T h e need to save the Indian and preserve his culture held pride of place in the review Amauta, directed by prominent politician and theorist, José C a r l o s M a r i á t e g u i (1894—1930), w h o s e Siete ensayos de interpretation de la realidad peruana [Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality] is a cornerstone of the indigenista m o v e m e n t to this day. M a r i á t e g u i s a w in the survival of the ayllu (the basic structure in the c o m m u n a l system of the 149 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Inca empire) the key to synchronize archaic e c o n o m i c structures w i t h M a r x i s m . H e also explained in his "las corrientes de hoy - El indige n i s m o " h o w this literary m o v e m e n t could not give us a strictly accurate version of the Indian because it w a s literature written by mestizos and Whites w h o viewed the culture from the outside. T h e most prominent and influential author of the m o v e m e n t , José M a r i a A r g u e d a s , takes issue w i t h the second of these statements and spends his life attempting to translate the authentic voice of the race w h o s e b l o o d he lovingly and painfully shared. A s a student, w h e n he read the descriptions of Indian life in the w o r k of L ó p e z Albújar and Ventura García C a l d e r ó n , A r g u e d a s had been profoundly shocked by the lack of authenticity and v o w e d that he w o u l d portray the men and w o m e n from the A n d e s as they really w e r e . Indigenismo and the reading public are both fortunate, because this portrayal is no mere act of political canvassing. In José M a r i a A r g u e d a s the m o v e m e n t finds a committed proselyte w h o is also an artist of genius. Here w a s a man w h o spoke Q u e c h u a since childhood, one w h o had been a schoolteacher in an Indian village and had become an expert on A n d e a n music and song. A n enduring interest in his country and the w a y s of its people drew him first to the field of ethnology; recognition eventually followed in the form of an appointment as H e a d of the Institute of Ethnological Studies of Peru's N a t i o n a l M u s e u m of H i s t o r y . Clearly, A r g u e d a s w a s in a g o o d position to discuss Indian culture. But this w a s not all. H e w a s also adamant about portraying society as he experienced it, even w h e n this meant he had to spend his life rectifying the portrait. A s he matured professionally, the w o r l d he pictured resembled a series of concentric circles involving relationships that expanded beyond the overly simplified binomial opposition (between Indians and ladinos) that characterized the short stories of Agua, his first w o r k of fiction. His progressively more elaborate system of characterization finally culmi nated (in Todas las sangres and in El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo) in a composite portrait that extended beyond national boundaries in order to describe the relationship between foreign imperialism, national capital ism, and the Peruvian ruling and w o r k i n g classes. O n the basis of his handling and elaboration of character types critics have divided A r g u e d a s ' s fiction into three separate phases. In the first of these, typified by Agua and greatly influenced by the constricting para meters set out as guidelines by the generation of Amauta (guidelines that 2

2

A r g u e d a s has had n u m e r o u s articles on Q u e c h u a folklore, A n d e a n music, and p o p u l a r art published in n e w s p a p e r s and journals that include La Prensa (Buenos Aires), El Comercio (Lima), and the Revista del Museo Nacional de Lima. A handful of his n e w s p a p e r articles a b o u t Peruvian music h a v e been b r o u g h t together in Nuestra música popular y sus intérpretes. L i m a , M o s c a A z u l and H o r i z o n t e Editores, 1967.


The literature o f Indigenismo include an adherence to Realism, an ideological bent, and a portrayal of the feudal structure of society), A r g u e d a s forged an isolated m i c r o c o s m in w h i c h Indians and landholders - the c o m m u n e of T i n k i and D o n Braulio (in " A g u a " ) , or K u t u and D o n Froylán (in " W a r m a K u y a y " ) - lash out at each other in perpetual antagonism. In the next phase, characterized by Yawar Fiesta and Los ríos profun dos [Deep Rivers], the opposition becomes that between the coast and the mountain region, the costa and the sierra, understood not merely as geographical opposites but as c o m p l e x socio-economic and cultural settings that are dramatically different from one another. N o t surpris ingly, A r g u e d a s repudiated the coast, the region where an aggressive capitalistic system (antagonistic in every w a y to the collective sense typical of Indian communities) ruthlessly developed. Finally, in the third phase (represented by Todas las sangres and El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo), the ethnologist turned man of letters contemplated the painful and contradictory c o m i n g together of t w o w o r l d s - sierra and costa - w h i c h had been isolated from each other for centuries. A t this point, as if this clash were not enough, the sinister hand of imperialism gripped the reins in the disastrous race for p o w e r . N o one has done more to further the aims of the indigenista novel or to polish its tools than José M a r i a A r g u e d a s . T h i s is w h y , in a conscientious attempt to portray the social, e c o n o m i c , and cultural forces he witnessed around him, the author of Todas las sangres conceived five different character types. A s early as the second phase of his w o r k , the Indians and traditional landholders w h o people his fiction are joined by mestizos, students, and a n e w type of property o w n e r , a sort of nouveau riche [the new rich] latifundista w i t h political ambitions. W i t h o u t a doubt, the greatest innovation A r g u e d a s brought about in terms of these character types w a s the individualization and development of the mestizo. A s early as 1952, in a c o m m u n i q u e delivered at the First International Congress of Peruvianists, the H e a d of the Institute of Ethnological Studies stated that men and w o m e n of mixed b l o o d repre sented a social class that had to be contended w i t h in Peru. Self-evident though this may seem today, such a statement jarred both the sensibility and the credibility of many a m o n g A r g u e d a s ' s contemporaries w h o viewed the mestizo as little more than a thorn in the flesh of national culture. Actually, in the minds of Peruvians influenced by M a r x i s t theory since the 1920s, the redemptive role that M a r x i s m traditionally attributed to the proletariat had been handed over - lock, stock, and barrel - to the full-blooded Indian masses. A r g u e d a s , more lucid than most, set out to demonstrate h o w the future of Peru w a s actually in the hands of the mestizo or of the indio ladinizado w h o , like R e n d o n W i l l k a in Todas las sangres or Benito C a s t r o in El 151 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

mundo es ancho y ajeno, has c o m e in contact with the w a y s of Western culture. In ethnological studies as well as in fiction, he w a s to reiterate h o w , left to their o w n devices and isolated from the w o r l d , the Indians w o u l d soon be stripped of all they o w n e d and s w a l l o w e d by the voracious maelstrom of capitalism. M o r e than any other, the isolated communities needed to grasp Western thought and use it to their advantage. It w a s one of their o w n w h o could best mediate between both w o r l d s but only after c o m i n g in contact w i t h the ruthless society that w a s both a pall and a saving mantle for the traditions still maintained alive within the ayllu. W i t h this emphasis on the mestizo, the literature of Indigenismo evolved into a third phase, one c o m m o n l y referred to as Neoindigenismo because it posits the erstwhile disdained outcast as the redeeming element capable of bringing about a process of acculturation. T h e figure of the Indian, idealized by the Indianistas and exalted by the Indigenistas is actually transcended by a g r o w i n g number of authors w h o recognize the w o r t h of mestizo culture and envision the identity of their respective countries as a congress of cultures. N o t surprisingly, Neoindigenismo did not gain ground in Peruvian literature exclusively. It proliferated north of Panama in the expert hands of authors such as R o s a r i o Castellanos (1925-1974) and M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias. L o n g before concerning itself w i t h the role of the mestizo in a multiracial and multicultural society, h o w e v e r , the literature portraying native A m e r i c a n s in G u a t e m a l a and M e x i c o evolved - as it did in Peru through the stages of Indianismo and Indigenismo. T h e difference in the literature of G u a t e m a l a w a s that both tendencies were exercised by the same authors, sometimes conjointly. For instance, in his novel La Gringa, C a r l o s W y l d O s p i n a (1891-1956) relied on the Indian and his customs solely as b a c k g r o u n d color, a tendency that he left behind by the time his collection of short stories, La tierra de Los Nahuyacas appeared in print. In this later w o r k , the tone of social protest that typified the literature of Indigenismo rang clear. N o t only did W y l d O s p i n a give a striking and sympathetic portrayal of the Kecchi Indians, he also decried the deleteri ous effect of migration on laborers w h o end up losing their culture and identity after m o v i n g to the coast. A second G u a t e m a l a n writer to portray native A m e r i c a n s in the 1930s w a s less clear about his aims and, even, it seems, about his convictions. Poet and novelist Flavio Herrera (1895-1968) never quite made a choice between aesthetic descriptions and moralizing. W h a t had formerly been the distinguishing features of Indianismo (colorful descriptions, R o m a n t i cism, and idealization) and Indigenismo (social protest) were lumped together in exuberantly baroque epics such as El tigre. Herrera w a s just as undecided about Indian culture; he criticized the exploitation of native Americans but found them riddled w i t h insurmountable defects and 152 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature of Indigenismo cultural insufficiencies. Like Ventura G a r c i a C a l d e r o n in Peru, he w a s unable to find a satisfactory solution to the problem of integrating the indigenous inhabitants of his country into the mainstream of society, a riddle that became the main theme of one of the most poignant indigenista bugle-calls, written in the upsurge of optimism that followed the demise of dictator Jorge Ubico: Entre la piedra y la cruz by M a r i o Monteforte T o l e d o (b. 1 9 1 1 ) . A s the t w o - e d g e d title indicates, Monteforte T o l e d o w a d e s here into the murky zone of dual cultures w h i c h is to say - for the underdog, at least - of the totally unresolved problem of split identities. H a v i n g shared part of his life w i t h a full-blooded Indian w o m a n w h o s e language he learned and in w h o s e village he lived, Monteforte had firsthand experience of his subject. T h e Indian, as C i r o Alegria and J. M . A r g u e d a s suggested, must subscribe to Western culture to some degree (the " c r o s s " in Monteforte's title) and learn from it. W h a t the author of Entre la piedra y la cruz does is s h o w that once the Indian identifies with this culture, he is neither accepted by the dominant society nor fully satisfied with his native community. T h e bi-cultural hybrid w h o is smitten by ladino civilization turns into a pariah unless, as M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias will c o m e to demonstrate, mestizo acquisitions and accomplishments can provide a new system of values, a culture that functions as the living reminder of a past actualized in the daily ritual of the present. Monteforte's novel strikes a chord of naive optimism in its last pages w h e n its hero, L u M a t z a r , is rescued from death by the revolutionary forces that o v e r t h r o w U b i c o in 1944 and joins them in the struggle for a better w o r l d . His message is one of brotherhood: the ladino must feel responsible for educating the natives and giving them faith in a mestizo society they have never trusted. H o w e v e r , this is easier said than done. Racial hatred - as the characters of these Indians' sagas often note themselves - is a burning crucible in all mestizo cultures. Besides, w h y should Indians join revolutions? W h a t will they get out of them? W i s h i n g racial hatred and prejudice to resolve itself in a c o m m u n a l struggle for freedom is praiseworthy but futile as long as concrete solutions to integration are not,provided. Even before the publication of Entre la piedra y la cruz, solutions were proposed in G u a t e m a l a by the democratic governments that were voted into p o w e r after the fall of U b i c o . Juan Jose A r e v a l o ' s government ( 1 9 4 4 1951) set up farming cooperatives, and widespread educational programs geared to integrating the Indian into the mainstream of national life, while Jacobo A r b e n z (president between 1951 and 1954) implemented the A g r a r i a n R e f o r m that A r e v a l o had spent years setting afoot. Y e t even these reforms — as history w o u l d take care to demonstrate — could not 153 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

mitigate racial hatred. Q u i t e the contrary, in fact. Integration had to c o m e about as a more profound transformation in ideology and perception. Indian culture had to be first recognized as w o r t h w h i l e and then federated into the melting pot that w o u l d generate mestizo society. In Peru, the task of praising and s h o w i n g objectively the w o r t h of Indian culture befell José M a r i a A r g u e d a s . In G u a t e m a l a , this role w a s fulfilled by M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias. Both authors provided an enlarged concept of the Indian by including extensive glimpses of his o w n w o r l d v i e w . Unlike earlier w o r k s of Indigenismo in w h i c h native A m e r i cans are v i e w e d from the outside, there is in Asturias and A r g u e d a s a desire, as Joseph Sommers so convincingly puts it, " t o penetrate beneath the surface of Indian consciousness" ( " T h e Indian-oriented N o v e l in Latin A m e r i c a , " 253). T h i s desire brings with it a more esoteric language and, frequently, a type of syntax that aims to portray native speech patterns and non-Western structures of thought. T h e determination to m o v e beyond the former stereotype of superficial Realism and translate the Indian psyche typifies the w o r k of Asturias, w h o w a s determined, like A r g u e d a s , to give an accurate portrait of his people. H e w a s admirably suited for this task. T o begin w i t h , he had an impressive b a c k g r o u n d in ethnography and sociology. H e w a s also a mestizo on his mother's side and had been raised in close contact w i t h the Indian and his traditions from the time his parents were compelled to m o v e to the isolated village of Salarna for political reasons. His interest in the native cultures of G u a t e m a l a w a s early and lifelong, as attested by his doctoral dissertation on " E l p r o b l e m a social del i n d i o , " written w h e n he w a s just twenty-four (the dissertation has been reprinted by the Centre de Recherches de l'Institut d'Etudes Hispaniques, Paris, in 1 9 7 1 ) . U p o n reaching Europe in the first of many trips, one of Asturias's most sudden impulses w a s to enroll on a course on M a y a n civilization taught at the Sorbonne by G e o r g e s R a y n a u d , translator of the Popol Vuh. Neverthe less, it is true, he did not speak any Indian languages and as regards the sources w h i c h inspired his fiction, he only shared political c o m m i t m e n t with Arguedas. In this respect, and like his Peruvian counterpart, Asturias used his w o r k as, a platform to denounce the abuse and exploitation of an underdeveloped country by, first, a capitalistic elite, and, subsequently, an industrialized nation. H o w e v e r , the medium for canvassing his message w a s drastically different from A r g u e d a s ' s . In 1924, Asturias w a s dazzled by the theoretical and formal pamphleteering of French Surrealism. T h i s early contact w i t h the most avant-garde artistic movement of the time w a s responsible in turn for his life-long interest in magic, the esoteric, psychoanalysis, automatic writing, and w o r d p l a y , interests that w o u l d 154


The literature o/lndigenismo season his o w n brand of Neoindigenismo w i t h a w h o l l y unique flavor. In terms of formal originality, Asturias stood head and shoulders a b o v e his fellow Indigenistas w h o s e prose, w i t h few exceptions, w a s straightfor w a r d to the point of being terse. In contrast, his o w n brand of writing luxuriated in o n o m a t o p o e i a s and alliteration, the reason, no doubt, w h y critics often refer to him as "the p o e t - n a r r a t o r " (Castelpoggi, Miguel Angel Asturias, 201). T h e very close attention Asturias pays to surface w o r k , to the " t e x t u r e " of fiction, must not be mistaken for dilettantism or superficiality, h o w e v e r . His neoindigenista w o r k s , beginning w i t h Leyendas de Guate mala, combine magic and reality on many levels, m a k i n g them as dazzling and hermetic as the writing of James Joyce, w h o m the G u a t e m a l a n emigre to Paris greatly admired. T h e r e is, likewise, a w e a l t h of theoretical and referential b a c k g r o u n d from and through w h i c h Asturias's fictional material evolves. Because of his interest in Surrealism and his personal contact w i t h some of the key French intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s, Asturias discovers the w o r k of G e o r g e s Bataille, Freud, Jung, and, eventually, of C l a u d e Lévi-Strauss and succeeds in incorporating a number of their pet notions into the w a r p and weft of his fiction as, for instance, in his memorable masterpiece of 1949: Hombres de maiz. In this w o r k , pivotal elements in the story (such as corn, water, and fire) are linked w i t h colors, animals, and numbers in keeping w i t h their ascribed spheres of action in M a y a n c o s m o g o n y . A l t h o u g h this associa tion of elements is not readily apparent, it is, in fact, the unifying principle of a novel w h i c h develops neither chronologically nor through its protagonists but, rather, through a character substitution principle that is based on clusters of elements interlinked amongst themselves. By means of such an elaborate p y r a m i d of symbols, Asturias's novel harks back to the Popul Vuh, clothing the ancient Q u i c h e manuscript in modern garb and bringing together past and present, tradition and the modern w o r l d w i t h a deftness that is only beginning to be understood as one of the most daring experiments in the history of the modern Latin A m e r i c a n novel. For his next Neoindigenista novel, Mutata de tal [Mulata], Asturias recasts one of the mainstays of w o r l d folklore, namely, the tale of the p o o r peasant w h o trades off his wife to the devil in e x c h a n g e for wealth. H u m o r o u s , zany, and often grotesque, this allegory of the painful dilemma posed by dependency in developing nations translates the author's weariness after the fall of G u a t e m a l a n President J a c o b o A r b e n z . In 1954, C o l o n e l C a r l o s Castillo A r m a s ' s revocation of the A r b e n z A g r a r i a n R e f o r m L a w becomes, in Asturias's eyes, a catastrophe announcing the demise of the very same men of maize he had likened to 155



LITERATURE

the M a y a n corn g o d in Hombres de maíz. T h i s is w h y Mulata de tal ends in a holocaust in w h i c h the angry voices of the unborn, of history capsized, as it w e r e , cry out in anger " w e w a n t to be b o r n " (p. 297). Asturias, like José M a r i a A r g u e d a s , conceives an angry response to the historical situation around him. For this reason, Mulata de tal, like El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo, is a b o o k that teems w i t h disappoint ment and rage. Y e t , the very fact that these despondent w o r k s were written confirms the sustained hope of evolution and reform that typifies both authors, the t w o men w h o - along w i t h M e x i c o ' s R o s a r i o Castella nos - have done the most to interlace their fiction, written in Spanish, w i t h the idioms, thought patterns, songs, and legends of the Indian cultures of A m e r i c a in order to create a literature that is mestizo to the same degree as the characters it portrays. Herein lies their uniqueness as well as their greatness. Theirs is a message for the men and w o m e n of A m e r i c a to struggle, unite, and give birth, once and for all, to w h a t M e x i c a n Minister of Public Education (1920-1924) José V a s c o n c e l o s referred to as "the cosmic r a c e " . T h e s e three authors g o much b e y o n d the generation of Indigenistas w h o s e w o r k precedes - and sometimes coincides w i t h - the publication of their o w n . T h e i r brand of writing brings together Western techniques with stylistic elements from Indian literature creating the first major disruption in our hemisphere of the mimetic tradition that typifies European literature. T h i s is w h y Neoindigenismo should be viewed as not merely the most recent phase, but also as the most mature and, stylistically speaking, the most consumately conceived m o m e n t in the history of this entire literary tendency. D u r i n g the years in w h i c h A r g u e d a s and Asturias were advocating social change and translating the struggle for integration, authors further to the north were actively responding to the aims and goals set forth by the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n of 1 9 1 0 regarding the native population and their civil rights. M e x i c a n literature of this century in w h i c h the Indian is portrayed follows three types of approaches. First of all, there are tales of artistic ethnology produced by a handful of anthropologically oriented authors such as R i c a r d o Pozas (b. 1912); second, there are realistic narratives of social protest - La bruma lo vuelve azul by R a m ó n R u b í n (b. 1912) is a case in point - that respond to the traditional model of Indigenismo-, and third, there are those, namely R o s a r i o Castellanos, w h o mix techniques and transform language in order to echo w h a t they see as the Indian's inner voice. In M e x i c o the interest in the Indian has, in the w o r d s of Gabriella de Beer, an almost "scientific" quality (p. 560). A number of anthropologists such as Pozas, or writers, teachers, and journalists w i t h training in anthropology (Carlo A n t o n i o C a s t r o , for instance) have conducted highly 156 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature of Indigenismo w r o u g h t interviews w h i c h they have later used as a source of inspiration or published, with few changes, as a first person narrative or novela testimonio. T h e best-known e x a m p l e of this technique is the erudite m o n o g r a p h of C h a m u l a Indian culture w h i c h Pozas publishes under the title of Juan Perez Jolote, Biografia de un tzotzil after the actual name of one of his Indian informants. Pozas's novela testimonio is interesting for many reasons, not least of w h i c h is the meticulous objectivity (for instance, the author restricts himself to less than 1,300 w o r d s in an effort to accurately portray his informants' adequate but limited k n o w l e d g e of Spanish) w h i c h takes it beyond the ideological manipulation typical of Indigenismo in its earlier phases. T h i s same objectivity a l l o w s Pozas to avoid the over-folkloric emphasis that mars many an indigenista novel and guides his steps in portraying a T z o t z i l Indian's social life as he comes into contact w i t h Western civilization. H o w e v e r , such objectivity must not belie the fact that Pozas uses the informants' reports according to a social plan of his o w n w h i c h , as Jean Franco notes, is "the study of h o w , in revolutionary M e x i c o , social change is integrated into the life of a c o m m u n i t y " (p. 261). Juan Perez Jolote is, therefore, a w o r k of " a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l recreation" (p. 506), to b o r r o w Cesar R o d r i g u e z C h i c h a r r o ' s terms, and not a case study. Be that as it may, and even if some measure of recreation is involved, Pozas's w o r k a l l o w s us to witness the Indian w o r l d from the inside: the authorial hand and attitude are almost conspicuous in their absence. T h e same is true of C a r l o A n t o n i o C a s t r o ' s short narrative, " C h e N d u : ejidatario c h i n a n t e c o " (in La Palabra y el Hombre), w i t h the one difference that this w o r k is much more universal than Pozas's in its concern with matters of w o r l d - w i d e significance such as life, death, and love, even w h e n its focus is the life of a man in an isolated c o m m u n i t y . A second interesting contrast between C h e N d u , the protagonist, and Pozas's Juan Perez is that the former is receptive to the benefits of Western civilization. T h i s is the one exception to the M e x i c a n novels of this period in w h i c h authors systematically demonstrate the destructive effect of Western culture on the Indians' w a y of life. Indian protagonists, such as R a m o n R u b i n ' s K a n a m a y e (in La bruma lo vuelve azul), are torn between t w o cultures in an identity crisis that is translated, in this specific instance, by portraying the hero's origins as an enigma: is he all Indian or part ladino} T h e enigma is never resolved although the question of identity is explicitly answered by a village elder w h o tells the confused, humiliated, and, by then, criminal K a n a m a y e , that he is the w o r s t thing one can be: " a n Indian t u r n c o a t " (p. 1 5 7 ) . T h e 3

3

" C h a m u l a " is the n a m e given to a g r o u p of over 16,000 individuals w h o speak T z o t z i l and live in the m o u n t a i n s a r o u n d San C r i s t o b a l , near C i u d a d L a s C a s a s . T h e i r center is the t o w n o f C h a m u l a - a ceremonial city w h e r e political and religious authorities reside.


CAMBRIDGE

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LITERATURE

message, as in R u b i n ' s better k n o w n El callado dolor de los tzotziles is that ladino society destroys the Indian. If K a n a m a y e had stayed in his village he w o u l d have obeyed the l a w , but, having been contaminated by the outside w o r l d , he has lost the moral and spiritual support w h i c h the mother culture gave him. A s R u b i n indicates in the ominous epigraph to El callado dolor: " C i v i l i z a t i o n is like the abyss: it is easy to slide d o w n into i t . . . but w h o e v e r tries to c r a w l out once he has reached the b o t t o m is sadly wasting his t i m e . " T h i s attitude is evident even in the typical example of social Realism that follows the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , El Indio [El indio] by G r e g o r i o L o p e z y Fuentes. T h i s fascinating study contains all the standard themes, and suffers from the typical flaw, that w e a k e n the literary impact of Indigenismo: namely, the tendency to proselytize. A s is customary, Indians in this novel are portrayed as the instrument and object of ladino vanity and greed. T h e element of surprise comes in the last chapters where an indio ladinizado begins by becoming a social and political activistand obtains improvements for his people. T h e reader soon discovers, h o w e v e r , that ambition wears the same colored coat in all cultures. T o begin w i t h , the revolutionary ladino deputies w h o are ostensibly helping the Indians need contributions to be re-elected and ask the natives for help. In addition, the Indians, n o w politically involved in the revolutionary effort, have no time, as they did in the old days, to till the lands they have recently received from the government. L o p e z y Fuentes ends the novel by suggesting that while the Indian political activist has improved his lot after receiving an appointment to City C o u n c i l , tra ditional Indians find themselves in an extremely defensive position: all they have obtained is impending violence from angered ladinos w h o have lost property and are avidly searching for a scapegoat. W o r k s of literature that are directly aligned with the novel of the Revolution - such as El Indio, and El resplandor (1937) by M a u r i c i o M a g d a l e n o (b. 1906) - touch upon ideological questions in a suitably p r o v o k i n g manner without, as Joseph Sommers indicates, " p o r t r a y i n g convincing Indian individuals in the context of their o w n culture" ( " T h e Indian-oriented N o v e l , " 262). In M e x i c o , the focus on the Indian seen within his o w n cultural context is the domain of the so-called " C i c l o de C h i a p a s , " a masterful string of novels and short stories in w h i c h the action takes place in this southernmost region of the country. T h e authors w h o s e w o r k merges into the " C h i a p a s C y c l e " are: R i c a r d o Pozas, R a m o n Rubin, C a r l o A n t o n i o C a s t r o , M a r i a L o m b a r d o de C a s o , and R o s a r i o Castellanos, the recognized virtuoso of the g r o u p . Castellanos's Neoindigenista novels follow one another in an everimproving progression that culminates with the widely acclaimed master piece of the " C i c l o de C h i a p a s " : Oficio de tinieblas. Both her first novel, 158 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The literature o f Indigenismo Balún cañan, and Oficio de tinieblas d r a w on the author's experience in the state of C h i a p a s , where she spent her childhood. T h e focus of the earlier w o r k is the tense relationship between Indians and ladinos during the presidency of L á z a r o Cárdenas w h e n the y o u n g narrator's family, like all landowners in C h i a p a s , suffered major financial setbacks and s a w its p o w e r and position vis-á-vis the Indians seriously threatened for the first time since the C o n q u e s t . T h e legends and beliefs of the T z e t z a l Indians permeate the narration; in fact, Castellanos incorporates sections from ancient M a y a manuscripts including passages from the story of the creation of man that hark back to the Popol Vuh. It is true that, as M a r t i n Lienhard observes in a very important article, this use of a highly stylized and ancient rhetoric appears artificial in the mouths of modern-day Indians. In other w o r d s , it is totally p a r a d o x i c a l that whenever Castellanos w a n t s to suggest the flavor of contemporary Indian discourse, she resorts to the model provided by the translations of ancient M a y a texts (Lienhard, " L a legitimación indígena en dos novelas centroamericanas," 1 1 5 ) . T h e Indian language of Balún canán may well be inauthentic but, then again, h o w could it be otherwise w h e n the narrator is a ladino girl? She, as Ernesto in Los ríos profundos, acts as a filter through w h i c h " r e a l i t y , " even if s o m e w h a t disfigured by age and a cultural bias, is portrayed. T h e merit and advantage of including passages from the Popol Vuh is also underscored by Lienhard w h e n he explains h o w the ancient rhetoric imbues w i t h its prestige the modern and - in the eyes of the ladinos - the " i m p o v e r i s h e d " Indian language, investing it w i t h n e w dignity. T h i s , of course, is also w h a t M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias strove to d o all his life: create an A m e r i c a n idiom that w o u l d actualize the ancient traditions of M e s o a m e r i c a . It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Castellanos w a s a great admirer of the G u a t e m a l a n author. T h a t her writing develops in a totally different direction from his, h o w e v e r , is made amply evident in Oficio de tinieblas. Using as her point of departure and source of inspiration the messianic revolt of the T z o t z i l Indians (1868-1870), Castellanos conceived a vast frieze of culture in C h i a p a s at the time of Cárdenas and in the years that followed. T h e action focuses on the intimate lives of Indians and ladinos, both men and w o m e n , bringing to light the most thorough and c o m p l e x study of Indian character in the literature of Indigenismo: the ilol, or interpreter of the T z o t z i l mystic and supernatural beliefs, Catalina D i a z Puiljá. Catalina's sterility and the frustration that ensues from not conceiving 4

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A c c o r d i n g to Lienhard, C a s t e l l a n o s ' s source w a s V . V i c e n t e Pineda: Historia de las sublevaciones indígenas habidas en el estado de Chiapas. Gramática de las lengua tzel-tal. C h i a p a s , Imprenta del G o b i e r n o , 1888.



LITERATURE

(a terrible blemish a m o n g the Tzotzil) are s h o w n to be at the root of the Indian revolt w h i c h she engineers by promising immortality to her people after the immolation of their o w n Christ figure: the child she had raised and given up to be crucified on G o o d Friday. T h e novel depicts passion, ambition, and pride through a dual focus on t o w n (San Cristóbal) and village (San Juan C h a m u l a ) , on ladinos and Indians, demonstrating, much more explicitly than any w o r k of Indigenismo before it, that all men are equal even w h e n they refuse to treat each other as such. Equally dual is the chronological conception of the novel. Western time - specifically, the period of L á z a r o Cárdenas's government and the ensuing years in w h i c h the aims of the R e v o l u t i o n c o m e of age and efforts are made to implement the A g r a r i a n R e f o r m L a w — is historical. Indian time, on the other hand, is cyclical, based on myths w h i c h are celebrated as a perpetual re-enactment that guarantees continuity. Besides a dual setting and t w o conceptions of time, the novel has a deeply religious and mythical b a c k d r o p . T h i s religious element transpires already in the title, an overt allusion to the Passion of Christ w h i c h is re-enacted by the Indians w i t h a h u m a n sacrifice in the church of San Juan C h a m u l a and is not w i t h o u t the suggestion of the eventual likelihood of resurrection (of Indian culture, perhaps?) as Sommers astutely observes ("El C i c l o de C h i a p a s , " 259). T h e time for renewal is not the present, h o w e v e r . Induced by Catalina, the Indians revolt and are miserably defeated. Even Cárdenas's official representative - a man w h o encouraged them and fought on their side - is torn to pieces by the angry m o b of C i u d a d Real in order to stop the l a w from sending him to M e x i c o City where there is no death penalty. Interestingly, the Indian defeat is never described as part of the action; it is merely alluded to after the fact. By abstracting it from the novel, Castellanos qualifies the Indians' revolt as a non-entity, a failed, annulled event. T h e T z o t z i l that survive take to the high mountains; they have been beaten, the w o m e n raped, their brothers massacred. T h e y have lost their sense of unity, their pride, their tribal structure. O n l y the will to survive remains. T h e i r clothing is torn, they have gone back to w e a r i n g barely tanned animal hides. Historical time and " p r o g r e s s " have been relin quished. O n l y mythic time endures: the tale of their revolt and the events leading up to it b e c o m e a legend repeated by the Indian nana as something w h i c h t o o k place long before her charge, Idolina, had been born. Castellanos substantiates h o w the objectives of the R e v o l u t i o n amount to naught as far as the Indians are concerned. She openly defies official government policy by pointing out that the goals of Cárdenas's govern ment are far from being attained, that many so-called " r e f o r m s " have 160


The literature o f Indigenismo gone a w r y and that perhaps even the w a y in w h i c h the Indian is being approached is totally insensitive to his culture. Such defiance of government policy is one of the traits that typify the authors comprising the " C i c l o de C h i a p a s . " T h e i r novels, one and all, amply demonstrate that the Indian stands alone and isolated in spite of all the reforms enacted in order to integrate him into society. A s Sommers points out, Juan Perez Jolote is marginalized by society even though he has risked his life for the sake of the R e v o l u t i o n ("El C i c l o de C h i a p a s , " 260). W h a t becomes rapidly evident is that such critical distance vis-a-vis Revolutionary goals puts a n e w face on the literature of Indigenismo. After the period of optimism in the decade of the 1940s (one thinks immediately of El mundo es ancho y ajeno and Hombres de maiz, novels that announce the possibility of a mestizo society), w e have with the " C i c l o de C h i a p a s " a more lucid depiction of a situation that is, to this day, highly unresolved. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century authors pointed out the need to improve the Indian's lot; the indigenista novels from the 1910s to the 1920s s h o w e d that in order to improve it, a revolution w o u l d be required. T h r e e decades later, the Neoindigenistas stepped in to s h o w that the path to salvation must c o m e through the indio ladinizado. Closer to our time, the writers of the " C i c l o de C h i a p a s " suggest that the Indians w h o have c o m e in contact w i t h Western society either lose their identity and are alienated from both w o r l d s , or settle into white t o w n s to improve their o w n lives, thinking about their fellow Indians back in the village only w h e n an opportunity arises to get something out of them. T h e truth of the matter is that the phase of optimism announced by Alegria in El mundo es ancho y ajeno has been superseded by a phase of disappointment grounded in historical fact. T h e question left unans wered, of course, is: where, at this point, should the Indian turn? H o w are his goals and needs to be represented in the n e w literature of Indigenismo} Critics, a vast majority of them, have been announcing the demise of indigenista literature for almost three decades. T h e y affirm that this literary tendency has fulfilled its goals w h e n , in fact, as can be readily adduced, the problem it portrays is w h o l l y unresolved. It is in an attempt to c o m e to grips w i t h this problem that a remarkable poet and man of action steps forward. Before he died in a tragic plane accident in 1983, M a n u e l Scorza completed one of the t o w e r i n g achievements of neoindigenista literature: a five-volume chronicle of peasant revolt in the Peruvian A n d e s entitled " L a Guerra Silenciosa." A s C o r n e j o Polar points out, Scorza's creation responds to the parameters of Neoindegenismo through the f o l l o w i n g features: first, the ubiquitous use of M a g i c a l Realism to reveal the mythic 161



dimension o f the indigenous w o r l d ; second, a heightened lyricism; and, third, an amplification and supplementation (when c o m p a r e d w i t h earlier examples o f indigenista literature) of technical devices and experimen tation ("Sobre el ' N e o i n d i g e n i s m o ' , " Literatura y sociedad en el Perú 549).

T h e manner in w h i c h these ingredients are combined is totally n e w , moreover. T o begin w i t h , Scorza, like the authors w h o engendered the " C i c l o de C h i a p a s , " supersedes, w i t h one exception, the level o f propa ganda. In addition, he makes no attempt to internalize the style and rhetoric o f ancient Indian manuscripts. A s a result, the language of " L a Guerra Silenciosa" is less ponderous, more light-handedly lyrical, and very often hilarious. T h e fact that he w a s a first-hand witness of, and, to some degree, an actor in the Central A n d e a n uprisings described in the saga is in no small measure responsible for the immediacy of the a c t i o n . So, t o o , Scorza's interest in the authors of the Boom colors his prose; his writing is closer in flavor to that of Gabriel G a r c í a M á r q u e z (b. 1928), than to that of other indigenista authors. T h i s h o m o l o g y is most readily perceived in the handling and portrayal o f myth, a constitutive element in the first four novels o f " L a Guerra Silenciosa." In Redoble por Raneas, for instance, one character speaks to horses and is understood by them; another one, the protagonist o f Historia de Gar abombo el invisible, cannot be seen because, since ladinos refuse to see Indians, w h y shouldn't the hero take advantage o f a figure o f speech in the action of the novel? Instead of presenting these mythic beliefs through a referent or w i t h a critical distance, Scorza incorporates them into the fiction w i t h o u t in any w a y passing judgment on either the uproariously outlandish events or the poignantly tragic reality. In other w o r d s , the w o r l d v i e w described in these novels is the Indians'; w h a t the ladino w o r l d qualifies as legend is, in this instance, portrayed as reality. H o w e v e r , this is a statement that must be qualified. By the time w e reach the fifth novel, La tumba del relámpago, belief in myths is s h o w n to be insufficient in the face o f the all-powerful C e r r o de Pasco C o r p o r a t i o n that is s w a l l o w i n g up Peru and all its wealth. It is at this point that Scorza's w o r k becomes didactic as well as polemical suggesting "the need to elaborate a revolutionary tactic and strategy that will end the limitations of mythic thought, in this r e a l m " (Cornejo Polar, " S o b r e el ' N e o i n d i g e n i s m o ' , " 5 5 6 ) . M y t h i c discourse shrivels and even tually fades, indicating the need to question and recast revolutionary 5

6

5

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Specific references are made to the myth of Inkarri but in every other instance, the myths portrayed in the fiction are the author's creations and an attempt to improvise the mental structures that typify Indian thought. In the prologue to Redoble por Raneas, Scorza states: "more than a novelist, the author is a witness." True to his word, in the last installment of "La Guerra Silenciosa" he figures as a character under his own name.


The literature o f Indigenismo thought in order to m a k e it a w o r k i n g tool for Indians and peasants. T h i s , Scorza advances, must b e c o m e the g o a l of the next revolution because, as one character in La tumba del relámpago w r y l y observes, "the scandal of our struggle is that it doesn't coincide w i t h our ideology; rage and courage belong here, on this side, while ideas are theirs and not o u r s " (p. 225). T h e Indian is caught in a culture-shattering quandary: the myth that compensates for a bitter reality is to him both bridle and spur; it keeps him bound and strapped to the traditions of the past w h i l e , at the same time, happily invigorated w i t h the culture of his ancestors. W h y tear Indians a w a y from the beliefs that nurture them? Y e t , it must be done. T h e question is h o w ? T h e ex-aprista and Political Secretary of the C o m m u n a l M o v e m e n t of Peru echoes J. M . A r g u e d a s ' s criticism vis-á-vis C o m m u n i s t s and Apristas w h o harp on tried-and-false ideologies instead of forging new ones; especially since the problem at hand has not changed significantly since the nineteenth century: h o w can archaic Indian societies be integrated into the modern w o r l d to their o w n e c o n o m i c advantage but not to the detriment of Indian culture? " L a G u e r r a Silenciosa" remains open-ended regarding this burning question. Like Todas las sangres, it posits a need and provides a burning incentive to both society and the writing establishment. W h a t the answer will be remains for A m e r i c a and the indigenista novel of the future to resolve.


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Afro-Hispanic American literature Vera M .

Kutzinski

T h a t the 1970s should have been the decade to inaugurate the field of Afro-Hispanic (American) studies is scarcely surprising: the Civil Rights and Black P o w e r movements in the United States had prepared the ground for the founding of numerous A f r o - A m e r i c a n studies programs while the Boom of the Latin A m e r i c a n novel - sponsored largely by the United States' aggressive investment in Latin A m e r i c a n culture aimed at defusing the political threat of a post-revolutionary C u b a - continued to d r a w international attention to Latin A m e r i c a ' s literary production. T h i s , in turn, provided publishing outlets and markets for many poets and novelists of African descent, w h o s e w o r k received special attention and support from newly founded organizations, such as the Afro-Ecuadorian Studies Center in Q u i t o (1979), the Center for the Study of Black Culture in B o g o t á (1977), and the Afro-Hispanic Institute at H o w a r d University in W a s h i n g t o n , D . C . (1981). Like their predecessors, the Institute for A f r o A m e r i c a n Studies in M e x i c o (1945) and the Society for A f r o - C u b a n Studies Against R a c i s m in C u b a (1936), these and other institutes also launched new journals: Cuadernos Afro-Americanos (Caracas, 1975), Negritud (Bogotá, 1977), Studies in Afro-Hispanic Literature (Purchase, N e w Y o r k , 1977), and the Afro-Hispanic Review (Washington, D . C , 1982, n o w located in C o l u m b i a , Missouri). Conferences were organized, most notably the C o l l o q u e Négritude et A m é r i q u e Latine (University of D a k a r , Senegal, 1974), the Primer C o n g r e s o del N e g r o Panameño (1981), and several C o n g r e s o s de la Cultura N e g r a de las A m e r i c a s ( C o l o m b i a , 1977; Panama, 1980; Brazil, 1982). A number of publishing houses, a m o n g them C a s a de las A m e r i c a s , Ediciones Universal, and C a s a de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, started to reprint " c l a s s i c " twentieth-century Afro-Hispanic texts, such as A d a l b e r t o Ortiz's Juyungo (1968); A m o l d o Palacios's Las estrellas son negras (1971); Juan Pablo Sojo's Nochebuena negra (1972); Sofía (1972) and La familia Unzúazu (1975) by M a r t í n M o r ú a D e l g a d o (1856-1910); Autobio164 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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grafía de un esclavo (1975) by Juan Francisco M a n z a n o ; N i c o l á s Guillen's Motivos de son (1980); M a r c e l i n o A r o z a r e n a ' s Canción negra sin color (1983); R e g i n o Pedrozo's Poesías (1984); and the complete w o r k s of Alejo Carpentier, the first v o l u m e of w h i c h includes all of his " A f r o - C u b a n " texts. In the United States, an assortment of university and small presses published translations of R a m ó n D i a z Sanchez's Cumboto, Ortiz's Juyungo, N e l s o n Estupiñán Bass's When the Guayacans Were in Bloom, short fiction by C a r l o s G u i l l e r m o W i l s o n (Cubena), t w o volumes of poetry by N a n c y M o r e j ó n , and no less than four by Guillen. Unfortunately, the most interesting English translation of Guillen's early poems, Cuba Libre, has not yet been reissued. Similarly, the early 1970s witnessed the publication of several important anthologies of " b l a c k " poetry and prose fiction, starting with R o s a E. Valdés C r u z ' s La poesía negroide en América (1970), w h i c h w a s f o l l o w e d by three other collections in 1972: Hortensia R u i z del V i z o ' s Black Poetry of the Americas and her Poesía negra del caribe y otras areas; Enrique N o b l e ' s Literatura afro-hispanoamericana: poesía y prosa de ficción. Stanley C y r u s ' s El cuento negrista sudamericano followed a year later. Between 1976 and 1982, six major poetry anthologies were added to this list: Jorge Luis M o r a l e s ' s Poesía afroantillana y negrista: Puerto Rico, República Dominicana, Cuba, a revised and enlarged edition of w h i c h appeared in 1981; A r m a n d o G o n z á l e z Perez's Antología clave de la poesía afroamericana (1976); José Luis G o n z á l e z and M o n i c a M a n s o u r ' s Poesía negra de América; A u r o r a de A l b o r n o z and Julio Rodríguez-Luis's Sensemayá. La poesía negra en el mundo hispanohablante (1980), and N i c o m e d e s Santa C r u z ' s La décima en el Peru. T h e writer w h o continues to d r a w most attention from critics is of course C u b a ' s late Poet Laureate N i c o l á s Guillen (there are at least a dozen book-length studies on him to date, the majority of them written since the mid-1960s). Y e t there are many other poets and novelists of African descent w h o s e w o r k has become the focus of countless critical studies attempting to lend shape and definition to the field of Afro-Hispanic literature. S o m e w h a t ironically perhaps, but consistent with the US-sponsored development of Latin A m e r i c a n studies since 1959, most of the comprehensive critical studies of Afro-Hispanic literature since the pioneering w o r k of G . R. C o u l t h a r d and Jahnheinz Jahn in the late 1950s and early 1960s have c o m e out of N o r t h A m e r i c a and, with rare exceptions, are so far available only in English: Richard Jackson's The Black Image in Latin American Literature, Black Writers in Latin America, and Black Literature and Humanism in Latin America; M a r v i n A . L e w i s ' s Afro-Hispanic Poetry, 1940-1980; Ian I. Smart's Central American Writers of West Indian Origin: A New Hispanic Literature; as well as t w o essay collections, M i r i a m d e C o s t a ' s Blacks in Hispanic Literature, and W i l l i a m Luis's 165 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


Voices From Under: Black Narrative in Latin America and the Caribbean. M o s t notable a m o n g the Hispanic A m e r i c a n publications in the same category are M ó n i c a M a n s o u r ' s La poesía negrista and Salvador Bueno's El negro en la novela hispanoamericana, as well as w o r k s of a more historical a n d / o r interdisciplinary nature, such as José L u c i a n o Franco's La diaspora africana en el nuevo mundo (his Afroamérica had already appeared in 1961), and the collections Négritude et Amérique Latine {1974) and Africa en América Latina, the latter edited by the eminent C u b a n historian M a n u e l M o r e n o Fraginals. T h i s proliferation of literary, critical, and historical w o r k s by and about black Hispanic A m e r i c a n s has serious implications for the writing of Latin A m e r i c a n literary history today. T h e g r o w i n g attention these " m i n o r i t y " writers are receiving not only serves to remind more tra ditional Latin Americanists, not to mention non-specialist and even nonacademic readers of Latin A m e r i c a n literature, that twentieth-century C o l o m b i a n literature, for instance, must include the writings of Jorge Artel, Juan and M a n u e l Z a p a t a Olivella, and A m o l d o Palacios alongside the masterful w o r k of N o b e l Prize laureate G a r c í a M á r q u e z . N o r is it possible any longer, given the poetry of N i c o m e d e s Santa C r u z and G r e g o r i o M a r t i n e z ' s nationally acclaimed novel Canto de sirena, to dismiss the significance of Blacks in Peruvian literature as easily as José C a r l o s M a r i á t e g u i could in his 1928 Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana. M o r e o v e r , the " r e c o v e r y " of eighteenth- and nine teenth-century writers, such as José V a s c o n c e l o s , " E l N e g r i t o Poeta M e x i c a n o " (iyzz}-iy6o}), Gabriel de la C o n c e p c i ó n V a l d é s (Plácido) ( C u b a , 1804-1844), Juan Francisco M a n z a n o ( C u b a ) , José M a n u e l V a l d é s (Peru, 1 7 6 7 - 1 8 4 3 ) , C a n d e l a r i o O b e s o ( C o l o m b i a , 1849-1884), and M a r t í n M o r ú a D e l g a d o ( C u b a ) , all of w h o s e writings had previously been dismissed as imitative and generally devoid of identifiable A f r o - A m e r i c a n traits, poses the question of there being an actual Afro-Hispanic literary tradition and, in turn, of the possible existence of a " b l a c k discourse" or " b l a c k aesthetic" in Latin A m e r i c a . Y e t even if it is exceedingly difficult, and arguably not even desirable, to construct a unified tradition of A f r o Hispanic writing that might become the basis for a separate canon, A f r o Americanist critics, no less increasingly than their Latin Americanist colleagues, will nevertheless have to take notice of a substantial b o d y of Afro-Hispanic texts before m a k i n g general theoretical a n d / o r historical claims about their N e w W o r l d literatures. T h e s e are certainly timely reminders that neither " m a j o r i t y " nor " m i n o r i t y " canons are as stable as they are often made to appear. W h i l e no official consensus on the specific parameters of Afro-Hispanic literature has as yet been established, critical emphases on cultural authenticity suggest a privileging of racial identification that w a s much 166 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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less of a concern a m o n g earlier intellectuals w h o conflated racial w i t h nationalistic issues even as they distinguished between " i n s i d e " and " o u t s i d e " perspectives. For the most part, then, the authenticating rhetoric adopted today by Afro-Hispanist criticism largely reflects the legacy of the Black P o w e r and Black Arts movements of the immediate N o r t h A m e r i c a n past, as well as the ideology of the Francophone Négritude groups. T h e tendency to separate specific w o r k s by black writers from the rest of Hispanic A m e r i c a n literature and place them within a diasporic, pan-African context resoundingly echoes the cultural nationalism of the 1960s and the equation of the fight against (neocol onialism in Africa (as well as in Latin America) w i t h the civil rights struggles of N o r t h A m e r i c a n Blacks. H a r o l d Cruse's influential essay " A n A f r o - A m e r i c a n ' s Cultural v i e w , " published in Présence Africaine in 1958, the year after the proclamation of a free G h a n a , the M o n t g o m e r y Bus Boycott, and the desegregation battles in Little R o c k , A r k a n s a s , announced a new direction for the artistic projects of A f r o - A m e r i c a n s , rejecting the established conception of N e g r o culture as part and parcel of the A m e r i c a n experience. T h e ensuing controversy over assimilation versus separate identities marked the beginning of a radical redefinition of A f r o - A m e r i c a n literature in terms of an emerging pan-African vision, a reorientation that initially led writers like L e R o i Jones (soon to rename himself Imamu A m i r i Baraka) to denounce the w o r k of previous gene rations of black A m e r i c a n writers as inauthentic, as " U n c l e T o m " - i s h , identifying instead with the content and spirit of the w o r l d revolution. Interestingly, the essay in w h i c h Jones traces his incipient radicalization to a visit to C u b a in July i960, is entitled " C u b a L i b r e " (i960; in Home, 1966). A t the core of this reinvention of A f r o - A m e r i c a n literature in the United States, as manifest especially in "the new black p o e t r y " of the mid to late 1960s and in the impatience to translate ideological positions into aesthetic principles, is the conceptual need for projecting a unified cultural identity, a kinship based on a shared " b l a c k e x p e r i e n c e " or an "identity of passions." In principle, this is quite similar to the desire for cultural unity that characterizes the mainstream of modern Latin A m e r i c a n literature. Clearly, the concept of culture that informs modern Latin A m e r i c a n literature implicitly endorses beliefs in cultural bonds established by shared languages. Y e t , taken at face value, rather than as a literary mystification, that concept of culture obscures, rather than reveals, the sociopolitical realities of the various Latin A m e r i c a n countries, from their intricate and quite rigid caste systems masked by myths of racial democracy to the controversies over C u b a n cultural politics that, in the early 1970s, shattered the ideological consensus of the Boom years. If such literary projections of a unified Latin A m e r i c a n culture must be regarded 167 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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as acts of self-deception, albeit necessary ones, then any concept of a unified culture governing Afro-Hispanic literature has to be v i e w e d in much the same w a y . Born at a time of political crisis and dissent a m o n g Latin A m e r i c a n intellectuals, the very idea of Afro-Hispanic (as opposed to negrista) literature testifies precisely to, if anything, the absence of any solid link between language, literature, and culture in Latin A m e r i c a , to the fact that w h a t appear to be languages in c o m m o n are not reliable indicators of shared cultural values and practices. Such necessary insist ence on cultural heterogeneity, combined with the fact that many of the writers in w h a t is, for all intents and purposes, the domain of A f r o Hispanic literature are neither Blacks nor mulattoes, can only c o m promise the formation of an Afro-Hispanic literary canon, at least one based on race as a guarantor of cultural authenticity. H o w e v e r , by doing so, it brings into focus conflicts between ideological necessities and literary practice that can (and must) be examined from a historical perspective. T h e remainder of this essay, then, is devoted not to establish ing a new literary canon but to charting specific historical developments, with particular emphasis on negrista poetry and fiction during and since the 1920s and 1930s, as well as on the more recent rise of the A f r o Hispanic novel. W h i l e the recent interest in Afro-Hispanic literature is a direct result of the political and literary vanguards of the 1960s, it is also part of a much broader historical context. After all, Blacks appeared in the chronicles of the Discovery and C o n q u e s t of the N e w W o r l d almost from the very start. T h e first literary representations of Africans in Hispanic A m e r i c a can be traced back to t w o epic poems: A l o n s o de Ercilla y Z u n i g a ' s La araucana (1569-1594?) and Silvestre de B a l b o a ' s Espejo de paciencia (1608), to the latter of w h i c h Carpentier alludes in Concierto barroco (1974) by m a k i n g the character Filomeno a descendant of B a l b o a ' s heroic slave Salvador G o l o m o n . T h e literary and critical ventures of the 1970s and 1980s o w e as much to earlier periods as to the more immediate past: the debts to the socalled Afro-Antillean or negrista movement during the 1920s and early 1930s, and to the nineteenth-century anti-slavery novel in C u b a , are amply a c k n o w l e d g e d in many contemporary Afro-Hispanic texts, as well as in the form of substantial numbers of reprinted w o r k s from these periods. T h a t C u b a n publishing houses such as C a s a de las A m e r i c a s have - as W i l l i a m Luis stresses in his introduction to Voices From Under - b e e n instrumental in the p r o m o t i o n of Afro-Hispanic cultures seems consistent w i t h the role C u b a n writers and intellectuals have played, since the early nineteenth century, but especially during the 1920s and 1930s, in denounc ing racial prejudice and emphasizing the African contributions to A m e r i 168


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can cultures, in the context o f their resistance first to Spanish colonialism and later to US military, economic, and cultural imperialism. If, in 1893, J é M a r t i h a d issued a hopeful call for racial integration ( " M i r a z a " ) , by the turn o f the century racial discrimination in C u b a w a s again o n the rise. R a c i s m w a s fostered in part by the US occupation o f the island from 1898 to 1902, w h e n military units were segregated for the first time in C u b a n history. M o r e o v e r , j o b discrimination in both the sugar and, especially, the t o b a c c o industries, w h o s e prosperity attracted large numbers of white Hispanic immigrants as well as black w o r k e r s from Haiti and Jamaica, did much to increase racial tensions. In 1902, the same year that the Piatt A m e n d m e n t made C u b a a virtual protectorate o f the United States and a general strike w a s organized to protest against such discriminatory hiring practices, a group of university-educated black professionals successfully petitioned the government o f T o m á s Estrada Palma to ban comparsas and other forms o f A f r o - A m e r i c a n public performance. T h e Partido Independiente de C o l o r (PIC) w a s founded in response to the 1908 elections w h e n , despite both parties' promises to end racial inequality, not a single black politician w a s elected to office. Ironically, the P I C w a s o u t l a w e d in 1910 mainly due to the efforts o f M a r t í n M o r ú a D e l g a d o , the only person o f color ever to become president of the C u b a n senate. H o w e v e r , by far the w o r s t confrontation occurred t w o years later: the government of José M i g u e l G ó m e z brutally crushed race riots in Oriente and H a v a n a w h e n faced with the threat o f US military intervention. It also banned the secret society of the ñañigos (black mutual protection societies). D u r i n g these early years o f the C u b a n republic, the criminologist/ ethnographer Fernando O r t i z (1881-1969) began to explore H a v a n a ' s " b l a c k u n d e r w o r l d " and its history. O r t i z ' s plentiful w o r k w a s in fact instrumental in p r o m o t i n g A f r o - C u b a n folklore a m o n g C u b a n intellectuals. By the mid-i92os, w h e n ñañiguismo had been revived, the C u b a n C o m m u n i s t Party and the N a t i o n a l W o r k e r s ' Union ( C N O C ) had been founded, and M a c h a d o h a d ascended to p o w e r , O r t i z , w h o s e initial motives h a d been to gather scientific support for racist beliefs, had published dozens o f articles and three important studies, Hampa afrocubana: los negros brujos, Los esclavos negros, and Glosario de afronegrismos. H e h a d also founded the Society for the Study of C u b a n Folklore, with Archivos del Folklore Cubano (1924) as its official organ. A l l this, combined w i t h the launching o f journals such as Revista de Avance and Atuei by the " g r u p o minorista," as well as the notes of social protest that began to sound in the poetry of Agustín A c o s t a , Felipe Pichardo M o y a , Lino N o v a s C a l v o , R e g i n o P e d r o z o , Félix Pita R o d r í g u e z , and others, between 1926 a n d 1928, prepared the ground for " A f r o - C u b a n i s m " at a o s

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time w h e n the mulatto middle class distanced itself from the " u n c u l t u r e d " masses of black laborers w h o m they perceived as an insult to C u b a n civilization. A l t h o u g h the political situation in Puerto R i c o had changed little since Congress's ratification of the Foraker L a w in 1900, there w a s much less opposition to US imperialist ventures. In fact, between 1920 and 1930, all of Puerto R i c o ' s political parties (including the Socialists!) were in favor of Americanization. A t the same time, h o w e v e r , " L o s seis," a small group of Puerto R i c a n modernista [modernist] writers w h o s e pro-independence sentiments were quite similar to those of C u b a ' s " m i n o r i s t a s , " began to turn to social and racial issues as part of their w a r on romantic poetry. Even though Luis Llorens T o r r e s (1876-1944) had included a handful of poems about Blacks in his Sonetos sinfónicos, the first writer to popularize poesía negra in Puerto R i c o w a s Luis Palés M a t o s (1898-1959), an active member of " L o s seis." His early negrista p o e m s , " P u e b l o n e g r o " and " D a n z a n e g r a " (possibly inspired by V a c h e l Lindsay's " T h e C o n g o " and by the famous C u b a n reciter Eusebia C o s m e , w h o visited Puerto R i c o in 1925), appeared in La Democracia in 1926 - incidentally, the same year in w h i c h Langston Hughes published his influential manifesto " T h e N e g r o Artist and the Racial M o u n t a i n " in The Nation. La Democracia also published Pedro J. BrulPs " C a n t o a la n e g r a " in 1927 and Palés's " C a n c i ó n festiva para ser l l o r a d a " in 1928. Palés's " D a n z a c a n í b a l " appeared in Poliedro in 1927. H o w e v e r , the journals that devoted most attention to racial matters were the newly founded Hostos, f o l l o w e d by índice w h i c h printed "Falsa canción de B a q u i n é " (1929), " B o m b o " (1930), "Elegía del duque de la m e r m e l a d a " (1930), and " Ñ a m - ñ a m " (i93i)-

In 1928, the conservative Diario de la Marina, organ of all antinationalist causes and foreign interests in C u b a , and at that time the daily with the largest circulation in the island, printed a public announcement of the founding of the K u K l u x K l a n in C a m a g ü e y . O n l y a few months later, G u s t a v o E. Urrutia's "Ideales de una r a z a " made its first appearance in the Sunday literary supplement that the paper had carried since 1926. While it is difficult to define an exact starting point for w h a t is n o w called the Afro-Antillean movement, given that A l f o n s o C a m í n ' s " E l o g i o de la n e g r a " had appeared in 1925 and several of Palés's poems in 1926, it is safe to say that this modest one-page, presumably unpolitical forum for black culture - w h i c h w o u l d be discontinued at the beginning of 1931 because, ironically, it w a s t o o political - w a s the first major exponent of negrismo and its manifestations in literature, music, and painting. In addition to the c o l u m n " A r m o n í a s , " in w h i c h Urrutia, despite his initial disclaimer, commented openly on social, economic, and political issues pertaining to C u b a n Blacks, " I d e a l e s " published articles on A f r o - A m e r i c a n history and 170 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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culture in C u b a , the United States, C o l o m b i a , and elsewhere, along with translations from the w o r k of W . E. B . du Bois and A t é n o r Firmin, and also provided w e e k l y bibliographies devoted to black authors. It spotlighted the w o r k of black C u b a n painters and sculptors such as Jaime Vails, H e r n a n d o Cárdenas, T e o d o r o R a m o s , Crispin Herrera Jiménez, Pastor A r g u d í n y Pidrozo, and Andrés A l v a r e z N a r a n j o , many of w h o m lived in Paris at the time; reported on the international successes of composers A m a d e o R o l d a n and Alejandro G a r c i a Caturla, as well as the visits to H a v a n a by Langston Hughes and Federico G a r c í a L o r c a ; and it printed negrista short fiction by T o m á s Savignón (for e x a m p l e , " E l b o n g ó , " ) and G o n z a l o M a z a s C a r b a l l o . H o w e v e r , perhaps most importantly, it, like the literary supplement edited by José A n t o n i o Fernández de C a s t r o , regularly featured poesía negra: Ildefonso Pereda V a l d é s ' s " C a n ción de cuna para dormir un n e g r i t o " and " L a guitarra de los n e g r o s " (from Raza negra, reviewed in Revista Bimestre Cubana that same year); Palés's " D a n z a n e g r a , " w h i c h w a s reprinted twice, in 1927 and 1930; Hughes's " I , T o o " and several other poems translated by Fernández de C a s t r o ; R a m ó n G u i r a o ' s " B a i l a d o r a de r u m b a , " and many other p o e m s by José M a n u e l Poveda, R e g i n o Boti, R e g i n o P e d r o z o , the Panamanian R o g e l i o Sinán, and, a b o v e all, N i c o l á s Guillen. A l t h o u g h Guillen (1902-1989) had published at least six poems in El Diario de la Marina by 1930, including his "Pequeña oda a K i d C h o c o late" (later entitled "Pequeña oda a un negro b o x e a d o r c u b a n o " ) , and, like Alejo Carpentier, regularly contributed articles to " I d e a l e s , " nothing equaled the scandalous success of his eight Motivos de son (April 1930; three further " M o t i v o s " appeared in July of the same year). N o t even Tallet's " L a r u m b a , " published in Atuei in 1928 and the immediate object of controversy because of its overtly sexual language, had elicited this kind of a response. Guillen w a s showered with praise by Juan M a n n e l l o , Fernando O r t i z , and others w h o admired the p o e m s ' compelling rhythms, and Urrutia exultantly called Motivos the only authentic N e g r o p o e m s ever written in C u b a . Others, including R a m ó n V a s c o n c e l o s and, especially, the mulatto bourgeoisie of H a v a n a ' s C l u b Atenas w h i c h made up most of the readership of " I d e a l e s , " were skeptical, even offended, voicing strong reservations about the propriety of Guillen's poetic use of the vernacular of H a v a n a ' s p o o r Blacks in conjunction w i t h the dance form of the son. A l t h o u g h the son, descended from the famous " S o n de la M a T e o d o r a " (presumably dating back to 1580) and popularized in the 1920s and 1930s by Eliseo Grenet ("Papa M o n t e r o " ) and particularly M i g u e l M a t a m o r o s ("Son de la l o m a , " " L a mujer de A n t o n i o " ) , had by then achieved respectability, its transformation into a literary form w a s quite a different matter w i t h disturbing implications. W h i l e Guillen had already developed something of a reputation as an opponent of the 171 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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M a c h a d o regime due to his journalistic w o r k w i t h Urrutia, his budding political radicalism had never before entered his poetry in such an explicit fashion. Guillen's poemas-son [sow-poems] were daring literary experiments in more w a y s than one. N o t only did they emphasize the African contributions to C u b a n culture (the son is a formal synthesis of Spanish, African, and taino [ A r a w a k ] elements), thus indirectly and uncomfortably posing the question of C u b a ' s national identity. T h e y also, in the voice of black characters descended from those portrayed in anti-slavery novels such as Cirilo Villaverde's Cecilia Vaides (1882), addressed unsettling issues: racial shame is targeted in " N e g r o b e m b ó n " [ " T h i c k - L i p p e d N e g r o " ] , " M u l a t a , " and " A y é me dijeron n e g r o " ["Yesterday Someone Called M e a N e g r o " ] , for w h i c h Guillen substituted " H a y que tené b o l u n t á " ["One M u s t H a v e W i l l p o w e r " ] in later editions of Motivos. Poverty, prostitution, and economic injustice are criticized in " S i tú supiera" ["If Y o u K n e w " ] , " B ú c a t e p l a t a " ["Get Some M o n e y " ] , and " C u r u j e y , " and United States imperialism in " T ú no sabe i n g l e " [ " Y o u D o n ' K n o w N o English"]. Such volatile topics made these sones very different from Garcia L o r c a ' s enthusiastic " S o n de los negros en C u b a , " w h i c h w a s published in Musicalia that same April. T o many, Guillen's p o e m s amounted to w a s h i n g C u b a ' s dirty laundry in public, a charge to w h i c h Guillen himself alludes in his tongue-in-cheek " E p í s t o l a " [Epistle] to fellow poet Eliseo D i e g o in El diario que a diario [The Daily Daily]. H o w e v e r , such criticisms only furthered Guillen's fame. Motivos appeared as a booklet soon after its initial publication and w a s set to music in its entirety by A m a d e o R o l d a n (1900—1939). Alejandro G a r c í a Caturla, a student of Pedro Sanjuán and N a d i a Boulanger w h o had made a name for himself in Europe w i t h " D a n z a l u c u m í , " " D a n z a del t a m b o r , " and Carpentier's " L i t u r g i a , " completed the music for only t w o M o t i v o s . T h e first to c o m p o s e symphonies w i t h A f r o - C u b a n themes and rhythms (many inspired by ñañigo ceremonies), and to incorporate on a regular basis typical C u b a n percussion instruments in their performance, R o l d a n had previously collaborated with Carpentier on t w o ballets/suites, La rebambaramba (1928) and El milagro de Anaquillé (1929). Both earned him an international reputation: La rebambaramba, for example, w a s performed in M e x i c o , Paris, Berlin, and California in the early 1930s. R o l d a n had also written the music for Palés's " D a n z a n e g r a " (1928). It is quite possible that R o l d á n ' s early pieces, especially Tres pequeños poemas, partly inspired the poetic use of A f r o - C u b a n rhythms. T h e Motivos were completed in 1933 and first performed in N e w Y o r k in 1934. T w o pieces were performed in H a v a n a in 1937, but the w h o l e set not until 1959. In 1931 a lottery prize enabled Guillen to print another collection of 172 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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fifteen " m u l a t t o p o e m s " w h o s e title w a s derived from the final lines of "Si tú supiera": Sóngoro cosongo. Poemas mulatos. In this collection, w h o s e lack of tightness and unity may well be taken as an expression of C u b a ' s social, political, and cultural fragmentation, Guillen continues his critical examination of social, especially racial, topics, for instance, in " L l e g a d a " ["Arrival"] (clearly an antecedent of his 1954 family elegy " E l a p e l l i d o " [ " M y Last N a m e " ] ) , " C a n c i ó n del B o n g ó " ["Song of the B o n g o D r u m " ] , " C a n t o n e g r o " ["Black C h a n t " ] , " R u m b a , " " V e l o r i o de Papa M o n t e r o " [ " W a k e for Papa M o n t e r o " ] , "Secuestro de la mujer de A n t o n i o " ["Abduction of A n t o n i o ' s W o m a n " ] , " P r e g ó n " ["Street C r y " ] , and " O r g a n i l l o " ["Barrel O r g a n " ] . Guillen offers his poetics of mestizaje in resistance to " y a n q u i " imperialism in the C a r i b b e a n , w h i c h he explicitly targets in the epigrammatic " C a ñ a " [ " C a n e " ] . T h i s anti-imperialism becomes the main project of West Indies, Ltd. and, in fact, most of Guillen's subsequent poems. T h e desire for more than nominal national independence w a s a major catalyst for Afro-Antilleanism, particularly because the ever-present threat of US military intervention had been successfully invoked by a number of C u b a n presidents to manipulate the island's internal politics, especially w i t h regard to race issues. H o w e v e r , if the negrista w o r k of Ballagas, G u i r a o , Tallet, Carpentier, Palés, and others cannot be separated from the fight against US imperialism any more than the politically more aggressive poems by Guillen, A r o z a r e n a , Boti, and Pedrozo can, the impact on these writers of the " v o g u e n é g r e " that swept post-war Europe is equally undeniable. France and G e r m a n y ' s " r e - d i s c o v e r y " of nonWestern cultures, especially those of Africa, began during the final quarter of the nineteenth century with the wholesale "transferral" of African art objects, primarily sculptures, to museums in L o n d o n , Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and Brussels. It coincided with a crisis in the visual arts that made painters such as Picasso, Matisse, and Juan Gris (and, to a lesser extent, Kandinski, M o d i g l i a n i , and M a r c ) more receptive to African aesthetics. Escalated by the First W o r l d W a r , this modernist crisis, fueled by the w o r k of ethnographers L e o Frobenius and M a u r i c e Delafosse and conceptualized by O s w a l d Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918 and 1 9 1 9 - 1 9 2 2 ) , spread to other areas of artistic representation, especially music (Dvorak, Bartok, Stravinsky) and poetry (Blaise Cendrars, G u i l laume Apollinaire, Philippe Soupault, Paul M o r a n d , A n d r e G i d e ) . In Latin A m e r i c a , Spenglerian ideas were disseminated mainly through José O r t e g a y Gasset's Revista de Occidente, w h i c h also published a translation of L e o Frobenius's The Black Decameron (1910) in 1925. Spengler's w o r k w a s reviewed in the Revista Bimestre Cubana the f o l l o w i n g year. Y e t even before the convergence of ethnographic, aesthetic, and political concerns g a v e rise to negrismo in the Hispanic C a r i b b e a n , A f r o 173 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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A m e r i c a n intellectuals such as A t é n o r Firmin (De l'égalité des races humaines, 1855) and H a n n i b a l Price (De la réhabilitation de la race noire par le peuple d'Haiti, 1900) in the French Antilles, as well as W . E. B . du Bois in the United States (The Souls of Black Folk, 1903), had initiated " i m a g e r e n o v a t i o n s " that, c o m b i n e d w i t h the advent of G a r v e y i s m (1915), culminated in the H a r l e m Renaissance and Négritude movements. It is also w o r t h noting that René M a r a n ' s novel Batouala (1921), an important precursor of French W e s t Indian Négritude, appeared in Spanish during the same year it w a s first published. Afro-Antilleanism's immediate literary antecedents in Hispanic A m e r i c a were p o e m s such as D i e g o Vicente Tejera's " D o s n i ñ o s " (1876), R u b é n D a r í o ' s " L a negra D o m i n g a " (1892), Llorens T o r r e s ' s " E l n e g r o " (1914), and Felipe Pichardo M o y a ' s " L a c o m p a r s a " (1916). A l t h o u g h these and other p o e m s attempted to portray blacks sympathetically, they nevertheless perpetuated the representational conventions of a discursive tradition that ranges from the slavetraders' travelogues and the Enlightenment's exotic " n o b l e s a v a g e s " to the romantic paternalism of the nineteenth-century anti-slavery novels and pseudo-scientific theories of race. A s an avantgarde " m o v e m e n t " that, on the one hand, belonged squarely in the context of C u b i s m , Fauvism, Futurism, D a d a i s m , Surrealism, and, especially, Hispanic A m e r i c a n Modernismo [Modernism] w h i l e , on the other, it w a s deeply entrenched in contemporaneous national struggles for decolonization, Afro-Antilleanism w a s a conceptual and political battleground. T h i s literary m o v e m e n t w a s not unified by an aesthetic p r o g r a m , but w a s made up of many different historical legacies and conflicting political goals. Little is gained, then, by pursuing the controversy over whether A f r o Antilleanism w a s indeed an indigenous m o v e m e n t committed to " h u m a n i z i n g " racist stereotypes or whether it w a s an imported literary fad. Criticizing white negrista poets for their "circumstantial t o u r i s m , " as Guillen himself has done on several occasions (see his Prosa de prisa), while privileging writers of African descent for their presumably more " a u t h e n t i c " portrait of Blacks may help consolidate present ideological positions, but it also dehistoricizes and depoliticizes both the issue and the literature. Such a perspective also disregards the fact that the poetry of Afro-Antilleanism, no matter h o w conservative and "inauthentic" it may seem today, did set an important precedent for writers from other Hispanic A m e r i c a n countries. In that regard, it is quite significant that, w i t h the exception of Guillen's first t w o b o o k s of p o e m s , all the major volumes of poesía negra, as well as its only novel, Carpentier's ¡EcuéYamba-O! (1933), were published w h e n Afro-Antilleanism w a s already on the decline: Pedrozo's Nosotros appeared in 1933, Ballagas's Cuaderno de poesía negra, G u i r a o ' s Bongó, G ó m e z K e m p ' s Acento negro, and *74 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Guillen's West Indies, Ltd. (in many w a y s a transitional text that includes few negrista poems) in 1934. Palés's Tuntún de pasa y grifería, although completed by September 1933, w a s not published until 1937, the same year that s a w the first issue of Estudios Afrocubanos, the official organ of the Sociedad de Estudios A f r o c u b a n o s C o n t r a los R a c i s m o s , founded by O r t i z and others in 1936; and t w o major anthologies, Ballagas's Antología de la poesía negra hispanoamericana and G u i r a o ' s Órbita de la poesía afrocubana 1928—1937, were not published until 1935 and 1938, respectively. José Sanz y D i a z ' s Lira negra and Ballagas's Mapa de la poesía negra americana appeared even later, in 1945 and 1946. W h a t these dates s h o w is not so much a continuation of negrismo in C u b a and Puerto R i c o , but the broader dissemination of texts written during the late 1920s and early 1930s, w h o s e initial impact had been mostly in the C a r i b b e a n region (and in Europe), and not so much in other Hispanic A m e r i c a n countries. T h i s w o u l d explain w h y poesía negra written outside the C a r i b b e a n did not really begin to flourish until the late 1930s. M o s t notable a m o n g the continental Afro-Hispanic poets w h o began to publish in the w a k e of Afro-Antilleanism are the Peruvians Enrique L ó p e z Albújar (1872-1966) and N i c o m e d e s Santa C r u z G a m a r r a (b. 1925), the C o l o m b i a n s Jorge Artel (b. 1909), H u g o Salazar V a l d é s (b. 1926), and Juan Z a p a t a Olivella (b. 1922), the Uruguayans Virginia Brindis de Salas and Pilar Barrios (b. 1889), and the Ecuadorians A d a l b e r t o O r t i z (b. 1914) and N e l s o n Estupiñán Bass (b. 1912). De la tierra brava. Poemas afroyungas (1938) by L ó p e z Albújar w h o is best k n o w n for his 1928 novel Matalaché, largely continues the indigenista Regionalism of his Cuentos andinos (1920). Y e t it also includes several p o e m s , such as " L a abuela g l o r i o s a " and " E l c u l é n , " that thematize racial mixing in Peru, a country in w h i c h only an estimated 1 percent of the population is identifiable as black (afroyunga or chinachola refers to mestizos of black and Indian ancestry). Whereas L ó p e z Albújar's formal experiments rarely extend beyond the occasional use of vernacular speech (in "¿Jura, china?"), his fellow-countryman N i c o m e d e s Santa C r u z is a veritable virtuoso, Peru's foremost literary decimero and the only Peruvian writer w h o has consistently cultivated black expressive forms. T h e décima is a form of oral poetry that consists of four octosyllabic ten-line stanzas w i t h the rhyme scheme " a b b a a c c d d c , " usually preceded by a quartet upon w h i c h the rest of the p o e m elaborates and improvises (décima glosada or décima de pie forzado). It is traditionally accompanied by guitar music (socaban). Practiced in Peru and elsewhere since the early sixteenth century (see the " V e r d a d e r a relación de la conquista del P e r u , " from 1534, included in Santa C r u z ' s La décima en el Peru), the décima w a s relegated in the nineteenth century to the central and northern coastal areas, and, from the second half of the 175 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth, décimas were cultivated mainly by the black population. By the 1940s, urban migration and the deaths of M a r i a n o G o n z á l e z and Hijinio M a t í a s Quintana, t w o of the region's greatest decimeros, brought this popular poetry to the verge of extinction. A l t h o u g h Santa C r u z started writing décimas as early as 1949, his first b o o k s of poems were not published until the late 1950s and early 1960s: Décimas (1959, a small private edition, then again in i960), Cumanana, and Canto a mi Peru. A 1968 recording of his poetry, Canto negro (Lima, F T A ) made Santa C r u z k n o w n to audiences outside Peru, w h i c h resulted in the publication of t w o anthologies, Ritmos negros del Peru and Décimas y poemas. T h e themes of Santa C r u z ' s décimas vary greatly: they range from traditional religious topics ( " L o divino") to social and historical matters ( " L o h u m a n o " ) . T h e latter category includes satirical and h u m o r o u s commentaries on everything from love to politics: " T a l a r a , no digas ' y Y ' for instance, takes up the cause of the campaign for the nationalization of oil, while " N o c h e m a l a " condemns the events of Christmas 1964, w h e n fifty-nine Peruvian miners were killed due to the negligence of a US engineer. Y e t other décimas deal with the 1879 Pacific W a r between Peru and Chile. H o w e v e r , Santa C r u z ' s most frequent reference point is Peru's black population, their history ("Ritmos negros del Peru"), their language ("En la era c o l o n i a l , " "Juan B e m b a " ) , their daily activities. A number of p o e m s ridicule mulattoes w h o try to hide their black ancestry ("La P e l o n a , " " H a y negra y negra retinta," " D e inga y m a n d i n g a " ) . Racial shame as a topic in Afro-Hispanic literature dates back to Plácido's satirical p o e m " Q u e se lo cuente a su a b u e l a " (1842). It is also the subject of a number of plays, notably Sangre azul (1948) and Dientes blancos by the Ecuadorian Demetrio Aguilera M a l t a , El color de nuestra piel (1952) by Celestino G o r o s t i z a , and, more recently, Francisco Arrivi's trilogy Máscara puertorriqueña (1971). W h i l e the vast majority of Santa C r u z ' s p o e m s use the traditional décima form, he has also written a significant number of pieces on more international topics that employ a wide range of different poetic styles: " C o n g o libre," " J o h a n n e s b u r g o , " " S u d á f r i c a " (all from i960), and " M a d r e A n g l o a : el retorno," one of his 1976 poems about A n g o l a . " P a n a l i v i o , " dedicated to Guillen, as w a s " J o h a n n e s b u r g o , " approximates the son form to denounce racism and economic exploitation. T h e s e targets recur in " M u e r t e en el r i n g , " a p o e m about the b o x e r Benny " K i d " Paret and reminiscent of Guillen's "Pegueña oda a un negro b o x e a d o r c u b a n o , " and in " D e igual a i g u a l , " dedicated to G e o r g e W a l l a c e , " k i n g of racism and governor of A l a b a m a . " T h e p o e m that invariably closes most of the a b o v e collections is " A m é r i c a L a t i n a , " w h i c h appropriately sums up Santa C r u z ' s literary and political vision in the neologisms e s


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"Indoblanquinegros / Blanquinegrindios / y n e g r i n d o b l a n c o s , " parallel in their construction to the titles of t w o p o e m s by, M a r c e l i n o A r o z a r e n a , " N e g r a m a t i c a n t i l l a n a " (1953) and " C u b a n d a l u c i a " (1957), both included in Canción negra sin color. Santa C r u z has done for the Peruvian décima w h a t Guillen did for the C u b a n son, but his leftist politics have marginalized him in inverse proportion to Guillen's popularity. Artel, of the same generation as Guillen and often grouped w i t h A f r o Antillean poets, takes an equally strong interest in the poetic possibilities of dance, music, and folklore. Tambores en la noche: 1 9 3 1 - 1 9 3 4 begins w i t h a section of fifteen p o e m s devoted entirely to A f r o - C o l o m b i a n culture: in addition to invoking the percussive rhythm of the cumbia, a dance that combines Indian and African elements ("La c u m b i a " ) , Artel focuses on the "flancos inquietantes" ["disquieting thighs"] and "belleza d e m e n t e " ["demented beauty"] of the mulatta (in " ¡ D a n z a mulata!" and " R o m a n c e mulata") and celebrates the sensuality of black w o m e n (in " B a r r i o a b a j o , " " B u l l e r e n g u e , " and "Sensualidad n e g r a " ) . Other p o e m s , such as " T a m b o r e s en la n o c h e , " " L a v o z de los ancestros," " M r . D a v i , " and " V e l o r i o del boga ausente" - clearly a reference to Candelario O b e s o ' s famous " C a n c i ó n del b o g a ausente" from Cantos populares de mi tierra - express a nostalgic longing for a mythic Africa that in the end gives w a y to a reconciliation of ethnic and personal identities in " M i c a n c i ó n " and " C a n c i ó n imposible." T h e latter t w o poems may be read as preludes to the social poetry of Poemas con botas y banderas - published in 1972, the same year as Guillen's La rueda dentada and El diario que a diario — and to his Antología poética. In addition to previously published poems such as "Este duro salitre que se extiende en mi p e c h o , " w h i c h invokes Chile's Salvador Allende as a symbol of political resistance, the anthology also contains seventeen n e w p o e m s . M a n y of these, including " M a p a de A f r i c a , " " N o c h e de C h o c o , " "Isla de B a r u , " and " P a l e n q u e , " return to African and A f r o - A m e r i c a n myth and history but are much more vehement in their denunciation of slavery and colonialism than previous ones. Like Tambores en la noche, Juan Z a p a t a Olivella's Panacea: poesía liberada, one of the five volumes of poetry he published in the 1970s, devotes a w h o l e section to A f r o - C o l o m b i a n history and culture. Bullanguero: poesía popular is an interesting compilation of earlier pieces that includes a handful of negrista poems, notably " E u g e n e s i a , " w h o s e opening, ¿Qué quires, negro bembón? ¿que a tí te da yo mi amó? [What you want, liver-lipped negro? That I give you my lovin'?] 177 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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echoes Guillen's " N e g r o b e m b ó n " as much as the revolutionary "híbrido tropical / coctel de r a z a s " ["tropical hybrid / C o c k t a i l of races"] in "Aristocracia c r i o l l a " evokes some of the C u b a n ' s later poems. In Panacea, " L a negra C a t a l i n a , " " L a negrita C l a r i d á , " and especially " N e g r a m o d e l o " carefully avoid sexual stereotypes of black w o m e n . T h e i r portraits combine with more folkloric motifs ( " T a m b o r e s caribeños") and references to Z a p a t a Olivella's unsuccessful bid for the C o l o m b i a n presidency in the mid-1970s ("El negro sale a v o t a , " " L o s negros tienen candidato") as the author attempts to forge a racial and cultural equilibrium. T h e project of La hamaca soñadora: poemarios infantiles could be described in R a l p h Ellison's w o r d s as "teach it to the y o u n g u n s , " and has as its counterpart Guillen's " P o e m a con n i ñ o s " (from El son entero). Salazar V a l d é s , of the same generation as Z a p a t a Olivella, has published no less than ten volumes of poetry since the late 1940s. W h i l e his first negrista p o e m s date back to the early 1950s (see the collection Toda la voz), his recent Rostro iluminado del Chocó actually contains the largest number of p o e m s on black themes. Others can be found in Pleamar. Similar to Dimensiones de la tierra in its regionalist focus on Salazar Valdés's native C h o c ó , Rostro presents exotic mulattas ( " M u l a t a " ) and w o m e n " d a r k as Chinese i n k " w h o dance to the rhythms of the cumbia and the "tin tan, tin tan, tin t a n " of kettle drums ("La negra M a r í a T e r e s a , " "Baile n e g r o " ) . Sexuality, it w o u l d seem from these p o e m s , is a l w a y s African. Meditations on cultural ambivalence, for instance in " E l m u l a t o , " a p o e m s o m e w h a t reminiscent of " C a n c i ó n introspectiva" from Carbones en el alba (1951), are accompanied by picturesque accounts of A f r o - C o l o m b i a n fiestas and religious ceremonies ("Las fiestas," " E l v e l o r i o , " " S a n P a n c h o " ) . G i v e n that C o l o m b i a is one of the few Hispanic A m e r i c a n countries w i t h a politically organized black population (since 1975), Salazar V a l d é s ' s sexual and racial stereotypes seem curiously anachronistic. T h i s m a y well account for the fact that, despite the impressive number of his publications, he is much less r e n o w n e d than either Artel or Juan Z a p a t a Olivella. Poesía negra in Uruguay, after the publication of Pereda V a l d é s ' s La guitarra de los negros and Raza negra, flourished mainly in a few blacksponsóred journals, the most important of w h i c h are Nuestra Raza (1917; 1933—1948), Rumbos (1938-1945; 1948—1950), and Revista Bahia Hulán Jack (launched in 1958). For some black poets such as Julio G u a d a l u p e , C a r l o s C a r d o z o Ferreira, and Juan Julio Arrascaeta, these journals were the only outlet for their w o r k . Others, notably Virginia Brindis de Salas and Pilar Barrios, were more fortunate in gaining support. T h e first major b o o k of poems by an A f r o - U r u g u a y a n writer, Brindis de Salas's Pregón de marimorena, later to be f o l l o w e d by Cien cárceles de amor, is in many 178


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w a y s indebted to Guillen's poesía negra, both in its thematic focus on the street vendor Black M a r y and other working-class figures and in its formal adaptations of pregones (street cries), tangos, and madrigales. Similarly, the call for multi-ethnic continental solidarity under " u n a bandera / de un sólo c o l o r " ["a banner of a single c o l o r " ] , issued in " A la ribera a m e r i c a n a , " closely parallels the p a n - C a r i b b e a n vision of West Indies, Ltd. W h i l e Barrios's early p o e m s are not as explicitly concerned w i t h racial and social issues, the p o e m s of Fiel negra. Poesías do not merely pay h o m a g e to "tireless fighters" like Guillen and Langston H u g h e s ("Nicolás G u i l l e n , " " V o c e s " ) . T h e y also d r a w attention to the participation of Blacks in U r u g u a y ' s w a r s for independence from Brazil w h i c h began in 1825 (in " L a leyenda m a l d i t a " ) , the persistence of racism since the abolition of slavery in 1853 (in " ¡ N e g r a ! " and " R a z a n e g r a " ) , and the tenuousness of racial divisions (in " L a lección del a b u e l o " ) . Barrios, it ought to be added, w a s not only editor of Nuestra Raza but also one of the founders of the Partido A u t ó c t o n o N e g r o in 1937 w h i c h , though not legally banned like its earlier C u b a n counterpart, suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1938 elections and finally disbanded in 1944. Novelist-poets O r t i z and Estupiñán Bass, both natives of Esmeraldas, the predominantly black coastal province in northern Ecuador, are a m o n g the most prolific of Hispanic A m e r i c a n writers of African descent. Unlike the largely neglected w o r k of their Peruvian and U r u g u a y a n colleagues, their writing has been amply supported and p r o m o t e d by the C a s a de Cultura Ecuatoriana, and they are widely recognized as integral parts of Ecuador's national literary tradition. In addition, both have held influential government posts. O r t i z , w h o is also a naive painter of some repute, published his first poems in G u a y a q u i l ' s El Telégrafo in 1940. H e rose to prominence w i t h his prize-winning novel Juyungo. Historia de un negro, una isla y otros negros and has since published several collections of short stories, t w o more novels, and four b o o k s of poetry, including the anthology El animal herido. O f the first t w o volumes of p o e m s , Camino y puerto de la angustia and Tierra, son y tambor, both initially published in M e x i c o in 1945, only the latter, reprinted in Ecuador three times (in 1953, 1959, and 1973), is devoted to w h a t O r t i z himself calls poesía negrista. Divided into " C a n t a r e s n e g r o s " and " C a n t a r e s m u l a t o s , " the p o e m s ' themes range from Africa and the slave trade ("Breve historia nuestra," " C o n t r i b u c i ó n , " " R o m a n c e de la l l a m a d a " ) , and the more contemporary exploitation of Ecuadorian Blacks on the rubber and banana plantations ("Son del t r ó p i c o " ) , to Esmeraldan folklore and legend as well as addressing questions of cultural identity posed by a history of miscegenation. M a n y of the p o e m s in the latter t w o categories are formally indebted to Guillen, Palés M a t o s , and Ballagas, w h o m O r t i z has named as major influences on his poetry. O r t i z ' s many vernacular p o e m s - notably 179 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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" C a n c i ó n del pescador del r í o " w i t h its refrain " y o cro que s í " ["I think so"] and the mother's voice in " A n t o j o , " alternating w i t h the daughter's pathetic lament, " ¡ A y , m a m a , y o quiero un blanco! / U n blanco y o quiero, m a m a " [ " O h , m a m a , I love a white man, / a white man I love, m a m a " ] pay h o m a g e to Guillen's Motivos, as does the " t r a g i c " mulatta in " ¿ Q u e tendrá la S o l e d a d ? " " C o n t r a ' e c u l e b r a " specifically recalls Guillen's " S e n s e m a y á . C a n t o para matar una c u l e b r a " (from West Indies, Ltd.), " L a tunda, tunda que e n t u n d a , " and " L a tunda para el n e g r i t o , " w h i c h also anticipate the stories of La entundada y cuentos variados and Guillen's " B a l a d a del g ü i j e " from the same v o l u m e . " S o b r e tu e n c u e n t r o " evokes " L a balada de los dos a b u e l o s , " while the set " M o s o n g o y la niña b l a n c a , " " M o s o n g o y la niña negra," " M o s o n g o y la iña c h i n a " refers back to Ballagas's "Para dormirá un n e g r i t o " and similar p o e m s . O n the other hand, the percussive jitanjáforas " ¡ T a l a m b ó , t a l a m b ó ! " (from " F a e n a y paisaje") and "taca-taca t ó m b . . . tucu, tucu, t ú n n " echo Palés's " D a n z a n e g r a , " and the sexually charged "Sinfonía b á r b a r a " is reminiscent of Ballagas's " C o m p a r s a h a b a n e r a . " W h i l e the more recent p o e m s of Fórmulas, like the metafiction of O r t i z ' s last t w o novels, constitute a break w i t h the negrista genre, reprinted in this last v o l u m e is also an enlarged version of Tierra with several n e w negrista p o e m s from the early 1970s: " I n v o c a c i ó n , " " C o n s u e l o , " " A r r u l l o , " and " N e g r i t u d con b e m b o sidades." Similarly, the chaotic presence of the " A n i m a s o l a , " w h o m O r t i z identifies as the W e s t African trickster g o d L e g b a , a m o n g the narrative voices in La envoltura del sueño attests to O r t i z ' s continued, though more subtle, mixing of African and European cultural references and forms. In addition to seven novels and some short fiction, Estupiñán Bass has to his credit several volumes of poetry, the first of w h i c h is Canto negro por la luz. Poemas para negros y blancos. N o w editor of the journal Meridiano Negro, he w r o t e the first Peruvian negrista p o e m , " C a n t o a la negra quinceañera," published in the socialist paper la Tierra in 1934. His preoccupation w i t h lyric portraits of black w o m e n continues in the love poems that m a k e up the first section of Canto negro. T h e w o m e n w e vicariously encounter in " L a g u a l a n g a , " " N e g r a bullanguera," " L o l a M a t a m b a , " and even " T ú s a b í a s " are all-too-familiar sexual stereotypes, hip-swaying enchantresses w h o s e elastic bodies smell of cypress nuts, s w a y in the afternoon breeze, and are juicy like rubber trees. T h e y are not very different from their C a r i b b e a n predecessors M a r í a Belén C h a c ó n and Rita Barranco. In the second section, h o w e v e r , these images give w a y to several p o e m s about racial and class consciousness: " C a r t a al s o l d a d o , " evocative of Guillen's Cantos para soldados; " R a b i a " ; " C a n c i ó n del niño negro y del i n c e n d i o , " w h o s e assertive " N e g r o he sido, negro soy, / N e g r o v e n g o , negro v o y " revoices the opening of Guillen's " S o n número 6 " (in El 180 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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son entero); " M e n s a j e negro para el indio c a y a p a " ; and the title p o e m , " C a n t o negro por la l u z , " w h o s e appeal for ethnic h a r m o n y strikes many familiar notes. Formally more interesting perhaps is the popular poetry of Timarán y Cuabú and its more recent c o m p a n i o n v o l u m e , El desempate, w h i c h place Estupiñán Bass's criticisms of Ecuadorian society in the context of his country's popular oral poetry. If the responsorial structure of these t w o long p o e m s is in some w a y s reminiscent of the second part of the Argentinian g a u c h o epic Martín Fierro, portions of w h i c h frequently appear in anthologies of negrista poetry, it is in many w a y s even more akin to the " c o n t r a p u n t o " of N i c o m e d e s Santa C r u z ' s Cumanana. A c c o r d i n g to the bibliography included in Estupiñán Bass's Las 2 caras de la palabra (1981), Esmeraldan writers published twenty-eight literary w o r k s between i960 and 1981, the majority of them poetry. A m o n g these are also Jolgorio, Más acá de los muertos (1969), and Tal como somos, a poetic trilogy by A n t o n i o Preciado B e d o y a , w h o m Estupiñán Bass calls " u n autentico brujo m o d e r n o . " Selections from all three volumes are included in De sol a sol, an anthology of Preciado's w o r k that also contains a number of n e w p o e m s . T h e political and artistic influence of Guillen and A i m é Césaire is a c k n o w l e d g e d from the very start in Jolgorio, not only in " U n p o e m a a G u i l l e n , " " C a n t o a C u b a a m a n e c i d a , " and " A m a n e c e r , " but also in formally more typical negrista p o e m s such as " C h i m b o , " " R u m b e r a , " " B o m , " as well as " M a t a b a r a del h o m b r e b u e n o " (from Más acá) and " L e s toca su t a m b o r " (from Tal como somos). T h e n e w p o e m s of De sol a sol, a m o n g them " C a r t a torrencial a N e l s o n Estupiñán B a s s , " return to a more specific focus on C o l o m b i a ' s " G r e e n P r o v i n c e . " A b o v e all, h o w e v e r , they testify to Preciado's contention that it is inconceivable to think of Afro-Ecuadorian literature as the exclusive province of Blacks. Preciado (b. 1941) belongs to a n e w generation of Afro-Hispanic poets w h i c h , in addition to his fellow-countryman José Sosa C a s t i l l o , author of Canciones marginadas (1976), Canciones comprometidas (1977), and Canción testimonial (1986), also includes C u b a ' s N a n c y M o r e j ó n , C o s t a R i c a ' s Eulalia Bernard (Ritmohéroe), Colombia's Yvonne América Truque (Proyección de los silencios, 1986), and N i c a r a g u a ' s D a v i d M a c F i e l d (En la calle del enmedio, 1968; Poemas para el año del elefante, 1970). L i k e M a c F i e l d , N o r b e r t o James R a w l i n g s and Blas R. Jiménez from the D o m i n i c a n Republic have both published several volumes of poetry. R a w l i n g s ' s b o o k s include Sobre la marcha (1969), La provincia sublevada (1972), Vivir (1982), and Hago constar (1983), and he is best k n o w n for his prize-winning p o e m " L o s inmigrantes" (1972). T h e " n e g r i t u d " poet Jiménez has to his credit Aquí. . .otro español (1980), Caribe africano en despertar, and Exigencias de un cimarrón (en sueño) (1987), a v o l u m e that combines poetry w i t h p h o t o g r a p h y . Within the context of their native 181 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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land, R a w l i n g s and Jiménez are part of a tradition that can be traced back, through M a n u e l de C a b r a l ' s 12 poemas negros (1932) and Trópico negro (1941), T o m á s Hernández Franco's " Y é l i d a " (1942), and six b o o k s of poetry by Juan Sánchez L a m o u t h from the 1950s, all the w a y to Juan A n t o n i o A l i x ' s " E l negro tras de la oreja" (1883) and the popular poetry of M a n u e l ( " M e s o " ) M o n i c a . D u e to their Jamaican ancestry, the Panama nians C a r l o s G u i l l e r m o W i l s o n (Cubena), G e r a r d o M a l o n e y , and C a r l o s Russell, all of w h o m currently live in the United States, have strong ties to the C a r i b b e a n w h i c h they cultivate in their poetry. Both M a l o n e y and Russell, w h o , like the little-known C o s t a R i c a n A l d e r m a n Johnson R o d e n (1893-1977), writes in English, became k n o w n in 1976, w h e n some of their p o e m s were printed in Panama's Revista Nacional de Cultura in a special issue about W e s t Indians. Each has published one b o o k of poems, juega vivo (1984) and Miss Anna's Son Remembers (1976), respectively. A l t h o u g h he has to date produced only one b o o k of poetry, Pensamien tos del negro Cubena, C u b e n a (b. 1941) has received far more critical attention than most of the a b o v e poets, in part because of his short stories, Cuentos del negro Cubena [Short Stories by Cubena], and his novel, Chombo. C u b e n a ' s poetry (as much as his fiction) is characterized by an acute sense of history and pan-Caribbean cultural identity (in " L a s A m e r i c a s , " " T r i a n g u l i s p o n o a m e r i c a n o " ) , combined w i t h a penchant for political satire that he shares w i t h many other contemporary A f r o Hispanic writers, specifically Guillen w h o m he echoes in "In e x i l i u m " and, to a lesser extent, Pedrozo w h o s e " H e r m a n o n e g r o " he cites in " I n v i t a c i ó n . " W h a t makes C u b e n a ' s often epigrammatic p o e m s particu larly distinctive, h o w e v e r , are the abundant references to W e s t African cultural history as well as the modernist play w i t h language and typogra phy that heightens the ironic and at times sarcastic tone of many of his p o e m s . Particularly striking in their vehement brevity are the lines " N o queremos / K O C A / K O L A / K R I N G A " from " G a t u n , " w h i c h emphati cally resonate w i t h the " S o c i a l C l u b of M a s k e d M e n of Kalifornia, K a l a b a m a , and K i l l i n o i s " from the short story " E l b o m b e r o " ["The F i r e m a n " ] . T h e violent rage that permeates all of C u b e n a ' s writings and links him w i t h the revolutionary poetry of A m i r i B a r a k a , is only briefly alleviated by the tenderness of love p o e m s such as " N e g r a preciosa," " M u l a t a linda," and "India encantadora." W h i l e C u b e n a ' s reputation is steadily g r o w i n g , the most prolific and widely k n o w n of the n e w generation of Afro-Hispanic poets remains N a n c y M o r e j ó n (b. 1944), w h o s e first volumes of poetry began to appear only a few years after the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n . A m o n g these early b o o k s , Ricardo trajo su flauta (Havana, 1967) is of interest because of its musical references, while Amor, ciudad atribuida is notable both for its eroticism, w h i c h has been compared to that of Alfonsina Storni and Delmira 182 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Agustini, and for its optimistic recastings of A i m é Césaire's surrealist vision of a C a r i b b e a n city at d a w n in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939). A l t h o u g h M o r e j ó n ' s interest in C u b a ' s African heritage is undeniable, her more recent p o e m s , such as Elogio de la danza (1982), Octubre imprecindible (1983), Piedra pulida (1986), and especially Cuaderno de Granada (1984), tend to follow the path of her mentor Guillen's later social and political poetry much more than that of his poesía negra. Interestingly enough, and consistent with the historical legacy of A f r o Antilleanism, many of the post-revolutionary C u b a n writers w h o have most actively cultivated a new " A f r o - C u b a n " poetry, characterized by a conscious avoidance of jitanjáfora and cursory folkloric references, are not of African descent. A m o n g the most interesting texts in that category are M i g u e l Barnet's La piedra fina y el pavo real (1963) and his La sagrada familia (1967), R o l a n d o C a m p í n s ' s Sonsonero mulato (1969), José Sánchez-Boudy's Alegrías de coco (1970), and Pura del Prado's Cola de orisha (1972), w h i c h w a s inspired by Lydia C a b r e r a ' s El monte. W i t h the exception of Barnet, all these writers live in exile. W h a t is clear, h o w e v e r , from these and many other similar volumes of poetry, is that poesía negra or negrista, though it has necessarily changed, has not gone out of fashion in Hispanic A m e r i c a . T o paraphrase O s c a r Fernández de la V e g a (Iniciación a la poesía afro-americana), those w h o w o u l d have us believe otherwise have little understanding of the poetry or the fashion. D u e partly to the international reputation of N i c o l á s Guillen, A f r o Hispanic poetry, especially from the C a r i b b e a n , has, until very recently, received much more attention and publicity than Afro-Hispanic narrative. O n the other hand, it is also true that the early negrista writers produced little prose fiction. T h e most notable exception is Carpentier, w h o , in 1933, published the novella "Histoire de l u n e s " (in Cahiers du Sud, Paris) and ¡Ecue-Yamba-O!, the " A f r o - C u b a n " novel he had begun in prison in 1927 shortly before he left C u b a for France. A l s o w o r t h mentioning here is L i n o N o v a s C a l v o ' s El negrero: vida novelada de Pedro Fernández de Trava (1933), if only because it is one of the rare texts that present the perspective of the nineteenth-century slave trader. L y d i a C a b r e r a ' s short stories, Cuentos negros de Cuba, did not appear until 1940, and Carpentier's " O f i c i o de tinieblas" (1944), " V i e j a a la semilla" (1944) ["Journey Back to the S o u r c e " ] , " L o s fugitivos" (1946), and El reino de este mundo (1949) [The Kingdom of This World] until after O r t i z ' s Juyungo had become established as the Afro-Hispanic novel par excellence. W h i l e the Peregrinación de Bartolomé Lorenzo by Jesuit historian José de A c o s t a (1540-1600) w o u l d have to be cited as the most remote antecedent of the Hispanic A m e r i c a n negrista narrative, the most memor183 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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able black character to appear in an early relación is the Celestinesque bruja Juana G a r c í a , a free black w o m a n w h o s e subversive plots play an important part in Juan R o d r í g u e z Freyle's El carnero (1636). Reputed to be the first A m e r i c a n novel, El Periquillo Sarniento (1816) by the M e x i c a n José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi ( 1 7 7 6 - 1 8 2 7 ) , is n o t e w o r t h y here because of its explicit anti-racist stance, w h i c h promptly led to its being banned in M e x i c o . T o elude the strict censorship practiced by colonial governments increasingly fearful of slave insurrections in the w a k e of the Haitian R e v o l u t i o n (1791-1804), many of the early nineteenth-century protests against slavery were articulated in poetic form, for instance, José M a r í a de Heredia's " H i m n o del desterrado" (1825), D o m i n g o Del M o n t e ' s " L a patria," (1833), José Jacinto Milanés's " E l negro a l z a d o " (1836), Juan Francisco M a n z a n o ' s " M i s treinta a ñ o s " (1839), and many of the seemingly innocuous p o e m s by Plácido, w h o w a s executed in 1844 for his alleged participation in the M a t a n z a s slave conspiracy of " L a Escalera." H o w e v e r , w h a t most characterizes this period is the rise of the C u b a n anti-slavery novel, even if it w a s nearly impossible for abolitionist w o r k s to be published in C u b a at the time w h e n they were actually written: A n s e l m o Suárez y R o m e r o ' s Francisco and Pedro José M o r i l l a s ' s " E l r a n c h a d o r " were both written in 1838 but not published until 1880 and 1856, respectively. Cirilo Villaverde's monumental Cecilia Vaides did not appear until 1882 (only the short story version w a s printed in 1837), and Felix T a n c o y Bosmoniel's Petrona y Rosalía - also k n o w n as El niño Fernando and the only surviving portion of the projected Escenas de la vida privada en la isla de Cuba - w a s not published until 1925. A l t h o u g h M a n z a n o ' s slave narrative (1835) w a s made available in an ideologically conditioned English translation by Richard R. M a d d e n in 1840 (London), the Spanish original w a s not printed until much later (Autobiografía, cartas y versos de ]uan Feo. Manzano, 1937). In fact, the only anti-slavery novel to be published almost immediately after completion w a s Gertrudis G ó m e z de A v e l l a n e d a ' s Sab (1841), but it w a s printed in Spain, and she tellingly excised it from her collected w o r k s in 1 8 6 9 - 1 8 7 1 . A n o t h e r precursor of the twentieth-century negrista narrative is the 1867 novel Maria by the C o l o m b i a n Jorge Isaacs (1837-1895), w h i c h not only includes an " A f r i c a n episode," w h o s e tepid paternalism is very much in line w i t h C u b a n romantic abolitionism, but, more significantly, a hunde written in dialect w h i c h anticipates O b e s o ' s Cantos populares de mi tierra by a decade. H o w e v e r , it w a s not C o l o m b i a but Venezuela that w o u l d witness a veritable explosion of negrista fiction, from M a n u e l Vicente R o m e r o G a r c í a ' s Peonía (1890) to Juan Pablo Sojo's Nochebuena negra (1943) and R a m ó n D í a z Sanchez's Cumboto (1950). If both Nochebuena negra, an indigenista novel that documents the religious traditions of the black population from rural Barlovento, Sojo's native 184 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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region, and Cumboto, w h i c h depicts life on a coconut plantation during the second half of the nineteenth century from the ambivalent perspective of the mulatto N a t i v i d a d , have received the most critical attention from Afro-Hispanist critics, it is because the former is the only Venezuelan novel of that period written by a black author, and the latter, w h i c h received the Faulkner Ibero-American N o v e l A w a r d and w a s translated into English in 1969, is one of very few narratives in w h i c h a white writer effaces himself behind a first-person narrator of African ancestry, a situation suggestive of M i g u e l Barnet's testimonial novel Biografía de un cimarrón (1966). It ought to be added that Sojo (1908-1948) is generally recognized as the father of Afro-Venezuelan studies. H e w a s intimately familiar with the w o r k of Fernando O r t i z and published a series of articles on Afro-Venezuelan culture in the 1940s. Y e t despite their exceptionality in these respects, Nochebuena negra and Cumboto still have to be v i e w e d within the context of a host of other novels where preoccupation w i t h " v e n e z o l a n i d a d " almost inevitably led to an assessment of race relations, both from sociohistorical and metaphysical perspectives. N o t a b l e in the latter category are four novels by R ó m u l o G a l l e g o s , La trepadora (1925), Cantaclaro (1934), Canaima (1935), and particularly Pobre Negro (1937), in w h i c h Blacks, preferably mulattoes - w h o , due to their lower-class, peasant backgrounds were romantically portrayed as representative of the moral and physical vigor of the people - are charged w i t h revitalizing the country's decadent creole aristocracy by reconciling " C i v i l i z a t i o n " w i t h " B a r b a r i s m . " Similar u p w a r d l y mobile " m a c h i s t a " figures, not all of them as heroic as Gallegos's Hilario G u a n i p a , Juan Parao, Juan C o r o m o t o , and Pedro M i g u e l , appear in a series of other novels: A r t u r o Uslar Pietri's Las lanzas coloradas (1931) juxtaposes the mulatto Presentación C a m p o s w i t h the pusillanimous landowner Fernando Fonta. G u i l l e r m o Meneses's Canción de negros (1934), the first Venezuelan novel w i t h an all-black cast of characters, features the happy-go-lucky, oversexed Julián Ponce. T h e mulattoes Paulo G u a r i m b a and M i g u e l Franco from Luis M a n u e l Urbaneja A c h e l p o h l ' s ¡En este país! (1916) and Enrique Bernardo N u n e z ' s Después de Ayacucho (1920) belong in the same category. T h e only novel that effectively explodes the myth of the n e w f o u n d black social and economic mobility as a vehicle for integration, in this case by focusing on the ruthlessly exploitative side of professional sports (particularly baseball and b o x i n g ) , is Meneses's Campeones (1939). T h o u g h its insistent eroticism makes it different from earlier urban novels, such as M a n u e l D i a z R o d r i g u e z ' s ídolos rotos (1901), Rufino Blanco F o m b o n a ' s El hombre de hierro (1907), José Rafael Pocaterra's Tierra de sol amada (1913), Emiliano Hernandez's Vida de Caracas (1919), and Teresa de la Parra's Ifigenia (1924), in all of w h i c h Blacks play mostly secondary roles, 185 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Campeones, much like M i g u e l T o r o R a m i r e z ' s Fango (1936), significantly continues their overwhelmingly negative attitude t o w a r d mulattoes' social ambitions, portraying them as a " p a r d o c r a c i a " imitating the old creole families ruined by the civil w a r . W h i l e the increasing prominence of black characters in the Venezuelan novel since 1931 is, on the one hand, inseparable from the influence of Surrealism and its early manifestations in the w o r k of M a r i a n o Picon Salas, Uslar Pietri, and Bernardo N u n e z , it must also be remembered that many of these negrista novels were written at a time w h e n V e n e z u e l a , under the tyrannous reign of President Juan Vicente G o m e z (1908-1935), w a s undergoing radical economic transformations. M a s s i v e foreign (especially US) investments in oil led to large urban migrations as wejl as a constant influx of black w o r k e r s from C o l o m b i a and the Antilles. T h o u g h not the first novel to deal w i t h these economic changes and their social ramifications, D i a z Sanchez's Mene is notable here for focusing on Caribbean oil w o r k e r s in the M a r a c a i b o area and the racial discrimination they suffered. It appears that in countries like Venezuela and C u b a , there exist clear links between US economic imperialism and the rise of negrista poetry and/or fiction in response to the need to mine national cultural resources to counteract the deterioration of traditional moral and social values. It is not at all surprising, then, that most of these w o r k s are pervaded by a romantic idealism that encourages the depoliticization of racial conflict and the creation of nostalgic images of Blacks as a potentially messianic, but nevertheless exotic and " b a r b a r i c , " race. Sojo's novel, unlike Guillen's poetry, is no exception here. If the characters in Nochebuena negra, w h o s e title refers, of course, not to Christmas Eve but to the annual San Juan el Bautista celebrations on June 24, rebel against injustice at all, they invariably d o so in the same quiet and solitary manner in w h i c h Juan Soledà, protagonist of D i a z Sanchez's nationally acclaimed story La virgen no tiene cara refuses to give his picture of the H o l y Virgin a white face. Similar scenarios can be found in the w o r k of t w o Peruvians, the neorealist urban stories and novellas by José D i e z - C a n s e c o , collected in 1930 and 1938 under the title Estampas mulatas (1967), and the controversial novel Matalacbé (1928) by Enrique L o p e z Albujar, w h o s e " t r a g i c " mulatto protagonist José M a n u e l is ultimately vindicated at the expense of the black characters. M u c h more politically astute, for the most part, than the w o r k s by the Venezuelan negrista writers and their Peruvian contemporaries are the numerous novels and short stories that, since the early 1950s, have sprung from the pens of A d a l b e r t o O r t i z and N e l s o n Estupiiìàn Bass from Ecuador, M a n u e l Z a p a t a Olivella (b. 1920), Juan Z a p a t a Olivella, Jorge Artel, A r n o l d o Palacios (b. 1924), and C a r l o s A r t u r o T r u q u e (1927-1970) from C o l o m b i a , as well as Q u i n c e D u n c a n (b. 1940) from C o s t a R i c a and 186 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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C u b e n a from Panama. W h i l e all these novelists, most of w h o m are also poets, share a commitment to exploring the cultural and social dimen sions of their African ancestries, that commitment is also frequently qualified by other concerns. Ortiz's classic "negrigenista" novel Juyungo, for instance, dramatizes the often strained historic relations between Esmeraldan Blacks and the indigenous C a y a p a Indians. " J u y u n g o , " meaning " d e v i l , " is w h a t the C a y a p a s call Blacks. H o w e v e r , O r t i z ' s main concern here is to link racial discrimination and e c o n o m i c exploitation in the evolving social con sciousness of the black protagonist A s c e n c i o n Lastre. W e follow Lastre from his childhood in Esmeraldas to his heroic death in E c u a d o r ' s 1941 border w a r w i t h Peru. Y e t the novel's real hero, in many w a y s , is the mulatto N e l s o n D i a z , a university student and committed Socialist, w h o s e reappearance at the end of the novel signals interracial solidarity as it prophesies the socialist uprisings of 1944. T h o u g h Juyungo chronicles Ecuadorian history, it does not present that history in the form of a unified narrative. T h e plot, such as it is, is frequently interrupted by extensive accounts of Afro-Ecuadorian folk traditions, w h i c h connects Juyungo with Nochebuena negra. Sojo's novel, h o w e v e r , lacks the intense lyricism especially of " T h e Eyes and Ears of the Jungle" sections that open each chapter, and it displays an indebtedness to negrista poetry that few other Afro-Hispanic novels have. T h i s poetic super-realism carries over into the language and structure of O r t i z ' s later novels, El espejo y la ventana and La envoltura del sueno, subtitled Novela coral y colerica. T h e even greater narrative fragmentation of these t w o novels, and their often disturbingly macabre h u m o r , place them in close p r o x i m i t y to the " m a i n s t r e a m " of postmodern Hispanic A m e r i c a n fiction. Both have formal and, to some extent, thematic affinities w i t h , in particular, G u i l l e r m o C a b r e r a Infante's Tres tristes tigres [Three Trapped Tigers], Severo Sarduy's De donde son los cantantes (1967) [From Cuba With a Song], Luis Rafael Sanchez's La guaracha del macho Camacho (1976) [Macho Camacho's Beat], and Reinaldo A r e n a s ' s La loma del angel (1987) [Graveyard of the Angels], a nightmarish recasting of Cecilia Vaides. L i k e Tres tristes tigres for instance, La envoltura even has a blank page, in this case for readers' notes. A similar proclivity for discontinuous narrative forms characterizes many of Estupinan Bass's later novels, especially Senderos brillantes, Toque de qiteda, and Bajo el cielo nublado, an " e n v i r o n m e n t a l " novel in w h o s e prologue and epilogue personified aspects of the physical environ ment (the sea, the sky, the river, the old school building, etc.) raise their voices to lament and criticize h u m a n actions. T h e most m e m o r a b l e human voice in this novel is that of the displaced Esmeraldan R o c k K i n g / R o q u e Q u i n t e r o ( " N o me g o n o c e y u , ya no rimember m i " ) . Set in the 187 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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imaginary republic of Girasol on the island C a l a m a r e s , Senderos brillantes is a thinly veiled denunciation of US ("Estados A s o c i a d o s " ) imperialist ventures in Latin A m e r i c a . It opens, in Pirandello-like fashion, w i t h a series of letters from the novel's characters, w h o either congratulate the author or demand public retraction of his vicious " l i e s . " T h e individual chapters then regress from number 56 to 1, while the subsections m o v e f o r w a r d in alphabetical order. Appropriately, the novel ends, at i / z , w i t h yet another letter, this time from the author's "alter e g o . " Toque de queda, Estupiñán Bass's " d i c t a t o r " novel w h o s e elusive General Espinoza recalls D r . M e l a n i o C h i c a n d e Rentería, better k n o w n as Rasputin, from El paraíso, is broken up into one-hour intervals representative of the times of the curfew. It is the only one of Estupiñán Bass's novels that dispenses altogether w i t h conventional punctuation. In El ultimo río [Pastrana's Last River], his best-known novel, Estupiñán Bass employs a more conventional frame-and-tale construction to chronicle the rise and fall of José A n t o n i o Pastrana, governor of Esmeraldas, w h o gradually progresses from a vehement denial of his blackness ("he w a s white on the inside") to a violent hatred of Whites and eventually meets w i t h a mysterious death. Shortly before her o w n death, Pastrana's w i d o w , A n a M e r c e d e s , w h o had been indicted and jailed for allegedly poisoning her husband, charges Juan, a writer and childhood friend, w i t h reconstructing the true story from the Pastranas' personal papers. Juan's response to her at the end of the prologue, " N o , I am not afraid of the truth but of the lies in w h i c h w e live, that imprison u s , " could be taken as the motto of all of Estupiñán Bass's novels, from Cuando los guayacanes florecían [When the Guayacans Were in Bloom] to El crepúsculo and, most recently, L o s canarios pintaron el aire de amarillo. Interestingly, Cuando los guayacanes returns to many of the concerns of Juyungo but in the context of historical events to w h i c h O r t i z only alludes: the Conchist rebellion in Esmeraldas ( 1 9 1 3 - 1 9 1 6 ) . T h e unrelenting criticisms of contemporary social conditions, of the m y o p i a of politicians and bureaucrats, and the frequent attacks on the C a t h o l i c church that permeate Estupiñán Bass's novels as much as his poetry, as well as his experiments with narrative perspective, constitute both thematic and formal links between his w o r k and that of several of his C o l o m b i a n contemporaries: Jorge Artel, w h o s e first and only novel to date, N o es la muerte, es el morir, is a critical and ultimately quite pessimistic assessment of recent guerrilla movements in C o l o m b i a , and, by implication, the rest of Latin A m e r i c a ; Juan Z a p a t a Olivella, author of t w o novels, Historia de un joven negro and Pisando el camino de ébano, both of w h i c h center on black protagonists w h o s e internal or external journeys of self-discovery bring into critical focus racism and prejudice in C o l o m b i a ; and, last but not least, M a n u e l Z a p a t a Olivella, psychiatrist, 188 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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anthropologist, and C o l o m b i a ' s most prolific black novelist and play wright. W i t h the exception of Detás del rostro, Z a p a t a Olivella's first four novels are almost neorealist documentations of C o l o m b i a ' s socio-econ omic problems, from the exploitation of the rice farmers in the R i o Simi region in Tierra mojada, and the plight of the urban proletariat in La calle io, to an examination of religious fanaticism in En Chima nace un santo [A Saint is Born in Chima]. T h e film version of this last novel is significantly called Santo en rebelión. H o w e v e r , it is not until Corral de negros, later entitled Chambacu: corral de negros [Chambacú: Black Slum], that Z a p a t a Olivella focuses specifically on the exploitation and suffering of lower-class Blacks, a topic to w h i c h he returns in El fusilamiento del diablo, to dramatize the events surrounding the arrest and trial of the mulatto Saturio Valencia, nicknamed " T h e D e v i l . " T h e acclaimed Detrás del rostro, based on Z a p a t a Olivella's exper iences as a psychiatrist in a B o g o t á hospital, seems like an anomaly, both thematically and structurally. Y e t even if it differs from his other novels in that it does not communicate a revolutionary sense of solidarity a m o n g the d o w n t r o d d e n (in fact, quite the contrary), its narrative structure foregrounds one of Z a p a t a O l i v e l l a ' s overriding concerns: the social construction of identity. In addition, the use of multiple narrators in Detrás del rostro anticipates Changó, el gran putas. In preparation for close to twenty years, Changó is a novel of epic proportions that uses the legend of C h a n g ó ' s curse as a catalyst for its mythic history of A f r o Americans from the sixteenth century (Part i: " L o s orígenes") to the assassination of M a l c o l m X in 1965 (Part v: " L o s ancestros c o m b a tientes"). A m o n g the countless narrators are not only the orichas introduced in the opening poems (one of them, N g a f u á , C h a n g ó ' s messenger appears throughout the novel), but also a host of historical figures, such as Simón Bolívar, José Prudencio Padilla, the M e x i c a n José M a r í a M o r e l o s , and the Brazilian sculptor El Aleijandinho, in Part iv ("Las sangres encontradas"), as well as W . E. B . du Bois, M a r t i n Luther K i n g , Jr. (whose famous "I H a v e a D r e a m " speech curiously goes unmentioned), B o o k e r T . W a s h i n g t o n , Langston H u g h e s , and M a l c o l m X in the final and longest part. Part v is set in the United States during the 1960s and centers around A g n e B r o w n , a black anthropologist and the last in a long procession of characters charged by C h a n g ó w i t h keeping alive the m e m o r y of the African ancestors and the collective fight against racism. So dense is the textual fabric of Part v, so saturated w i t h references, quotations, and allusions, ranging from Estebanico, N a t L o v e , Frederick D o u g l a s s , Harriet T u b m a n , and John B r o w n , to Jean T o o m e r , Bessie Smith, D u k e Ellington, A l a i n L o c k e , C a r l V a n V e c h t e n , and Richard W r i g h t , and rhythmically punctuated by the ominous refrain " M a l c o l m , today y o u will be k i l l e d , " that it a l w a y s teeters on the brink of 189 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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narrative chaos. W h a t this tour de force does communicate, h o w e v e r , is an acute sense of urgency, reinforced by the fact that all of the novel's heroes die betrayed: they are either assassinated or c o m m i t suicide. T h a t urgency resounds in the novel's final warning: that, for the living, time is not infinite, indeed a powerful contrast to the apocalyptic ending of G a r c í a M a r q u e z ' s Cien años de soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude]. If the narrative techniques of Changó harken back to Detrás del rostro, Z a p a t a Olivella's use of W e s t African mythologies, w h i c h continues in El fusilamiento, can be traced to Chambdcú. By the same token, Changóos final part returns the reader to the autobiographical essays and stories of He visto la noche (1946) and La pasión vagabunda, based on Z a p a t a Olivella's extensive travels in Central A m e r i c a and the United States (1943-1947). O t h e r useful reference points are the short story inspired by Frantz Fanon's theories, " U n extraño bajo mi p i e l , " set in A t l a n t a , G e o r g i a , from the later collection ¿Quién dio el fusil a Oswald?, as well as the early play Hotel de vagabundos, w h o s e b a c k g r o u n d is N e w Y o r k City. M o r e than w i t h the w o r k of other A f r o - C o l o m b i a n writers, Changóos invocations of African m y t h o l o g y have more in c o m m o n w i t h the fictions of Central A m e r i c a n writers like Q u i n c e D u n c a n and C u b e n a , as well as w i t h M a n u e l Cofiño L o p e z ' s Cuando la sangre se parece al fuego, a C u b a n novel about the conflict between ñañiguísmo and revolutionary ideology. O n the other hand, most of Z a p a t a Olivella's earlier writings, including the predominantly rural stories of Cuentos de muerte y libertad, s h o w greater affinity to the regionalist Social Realism of C a r l o s A r t u r o T r u q u e and even the Naturalism of A m o l d o Palacios. Both T r u q u e , author of t w o volumes of short stories, La Granizada y otros cuentos and the posthumous El día que terminó el verano y otros relatos, w h i c h rarely focus on the predicament of A f r o - C o l o m b i a n s , and Palacios, w h o has published t w o novels about his native region of C h o c ó , Las estrellas son negras, w h o s e language and narrative structure has been c o m p a r e d to Richard W r i g h t ' s Native Son (1945), and La selva y la lluvia, are relatively littlek n o w n outside C o l o m b i a . W i t h the exception of D i a z Sanchez's Mené, few novels written outside the C a r i b b e a n even made reference to the black w o r k e r s and their families w h o , during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emigrated from the anglophone and francophone parts of the W e s t Indies to various Hispanic A m e r i c a n countries, notably Venezuela, C o s t a R i c a , and Panama. It is precisely the history of such immigrant communities that assumes unprecedented prominence in the recent novels and stories by Q u i n c e D u n c a n and C u b e n a . W i t h the exception of his a w a r d - w i n n i n g Final de calle, a novel about ex-revolutionaries corrupted by p o w e r that self-consciously refrains from bringing to the fore black issues and themes, D u n c a n ' s fiction, from the stories of Una canción en la madru190 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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gada and his first novel, Hombres curtidos, concentrates on his native C o s t a R i c a n province of L i m ó n . Even today, the population of L i m ó n consists predominantly of working-class Blacks, descended from the large numbers of W e s t Indians w h o , after the collapse of Jamaica's sugar e c o n o m y , arrived in C o s t a Rica between 1872 and the turn of the century to w o r k in railroad construction and, later, on the banana plantations of the United Fruit C o m p a n y . T h e historical b a c k g r o u n d of La paz del pueblo, for instance, is the strike against United Fruit in 1934, as a result of w h i c h the c o m p a n y m o v e d its operations to the Pacific coast and banned black w o r k e r s from employment in banana production, leaving many of them to l o o k for w o r k in the neighboring Panama. T h e r e are t w o previous C o s t a R i c a n novels about the clash between United Fruit and its black w o r k e r s : C a r l o s Luis Fallas's autobiographical Mamita Yunai (1941) and Joaquin Gutierrez's Puerto Limón (1950). H o w e v e r , D u n c a n ' s characters and emphases are quite distinct from those of his predecessors. Reminiscent of the revolutionary José G o r d o n from " L a leyenda de José G o r d o n " a n d j£an Paul from " L a rebelión p o c o m i a " (both stories are included in La rebelión pocomia y otros relatos), Pedro D u l l , the protagonist of La paz del pueblo, is a vociferous advocate of G a r v e y i s m , a m o v e m e n t with enormous popular support in L i m ó n during the 1920s and the specter that disrupts the complacent peace of the people/village. Y e t D u l l is also, significantly, a member of the African-Jamaican pocomania or pocomia [Pukumina] cult, into w h i c h he is initiated by the priestess M a m a Bull, another character from the title story of La rebelión pocomia. T h e clash between Western science and A f r o - C a r i b b e a n folk religions plays an important part in almost all of D u n c a n ' s fictions. Los cuatro espejos, D u n c a n ' s second and most ambitious novel, is only one e x a m p l e . Lorena, herself daughter of an obeah-man and the first wife of the anglophone mulatto Charles M c F o r b e s , w h o s e racial ambivalence lies at the center of this novel, is attacked by a dupi [duppy] in broad daylight and sustains a mysterious illness incurable by contemporary medicine. For m a n y of D u n c a n ' s characters, religious rituals also provide important contexts for cultural identification, even though economic and class differences in some cases, such as in La paz del pueblo, m a k e racial solidarity seem quite remote. H o w e v e r , D u n c a n is by n o means an advocate of separation but of solidarity across racial lines and of a unified C o s t a R i c a . Since he is descended from a c o m m u n i t y of W e s t Indian Blacks that has held on to English as a defense against assimilation, D u n c a n ' s choice to write in Spanish is certainly telling in this regard. D u n c a n ' s use of A f r o - A m e r i c a n myth and religion is particularly striking in " L o s mitos ancestrales," the final short story in La rebelión pocomia, w h o s e narrator is a resident of the samamfo, the realm of the dead ancestors. If this links D u n c a n and Z a p a t a Olivella to some extent, 191 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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the w o r k to w h i c h D u n c a n ' s is most closely connected is unquestionably that of his Panamanian contemporary, C a r l o s Guillermo W i l s o n (Cubena). Unlike D u n c a n , h o w e v e r , C u b e n a has elected to live and w o r k in the United States. In addition to his poetry, he has published a v o l u m e of short stories, Cuentos del negro Cubena, and a novel, Chombo, the first v o l u m e in a projected trilogy. T h e second, entitled Afroexilados, has been completed and is forthcoming. Chombo, written in a style that A d a l b e r t o O r t i z has called "tremendismo negrista," rages against the " q u i x o t i c illusion" of racial democracy in Panama, a country that in 1926 prohibited all further immigration of Antillean Blacks and in 1941 denationalized all Panamanians of W e s t Indian descent. Related targets are the effects of the US presence in Panama since the building of the C a n a l (1904-1914), a m o n g them the w a g e discrimination of the G o l d and Silver R o l l system. Like many of C u b e n a ' s short stories, Cbombo is set in the C a n a l Z o n e , though it is by no means the first novel about that area and its W e s t Indian community. H o w e v e r , it differs considerably from previous novels, such as Joaquin Beleno's trilogy Curundu, (1963), Luna verde (1951), and Gamboa Road Gang (1959), and especially, from Anguilera M a l t a ' s Canal Zone (1935), all of w h i c h , though sympathetic to W e s t Indian Blacks, still represent them in highly ambiguous terms. Cbombo, on the other hand, meticulously traces the history of black Panamanians of W e s t Indian origin (derogatorily called chombos). Its brevity notwithstanding, the novel aspires to be a Panamanian version of Roots, w h i c h Lito, the y o u n g protagonist, is reading in one of the early chapters. Set against the b a c k g r o u n d of the T o r r i j o s - C a r t e r negotiations about the sovereignty of the Panama C a n a l , Chombo takes us back to the nineteenth-century " m i d d l e p a s s a g e " from Jamaica to Panama as Lito meditates on "the matter of the three gold bracelets," symbolic of the history of his family and its African (as well as p r e - C o l u m b i a n N e w W o r l d ) origins. T h e story of N e n e n and Papa James D u g l i n , w h i c h eventually returns to the Jamaican m a r o o n stronghold X a y m a c a - N o k o r o , a mythic homeland of sorts, begins in the third chapter and is told by "the oldest African ancestor." In the final chapter, C u b e n a even d r a w s figures from tra ditional African animal fables (tortoise, spider, and serpent) to relate the history of the African family Onitefo and their Inca, A z t e c , and T o l t e c connections, w h i c h completes the story of the bracelets. Even if the novel's b l a c k / w h i t e symbolism seems often strained, Chombo is remarkable not only for its interweaving of minute historical detail and abundant information about West-Indian Panamanian popular culture (including music and cuisine), w i t h Ashanti m y t h o l o g y , but also for its linguistic inventiveness. Its language is a fascinating blend of T w i , Jamaican, and Haitian Creoles, and Spanish, as in " p o u r cua tii no cocinar like petit sister A i d i t a " or " c h e ne parle avec t u a , " and is frequently laced 192 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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w i t h emphatic profanity. T h i s hybrid language, no less than the novel's historico-cultural references and the epigraphs d r a w n from G a r v e y , Juan Latino, Estupinan Bass, Guillen, Brindis de Salas, A d a l b e r t o O r t i z , and N i c o m e d e s Santa C r u z , self-consciously situates Chombo within an A f r o Hispanic context. Y e t C u b e n a ' s violent rage, and the obsessive prolife ration of scatological images in both the novel and his short stories, find by far their closest equivalents in the fiction of Jones/Baraka in the earlyto-mid 1960s, especially in the novel The System of Dante's Hell (1965). So, for that matter, does C u b e n a ' s h o m o p h o b i a . Y e t in the midst of images of violence, racial and sexual pathology, and abject poverty w i t h w h i c h C u b e n a inundates his readers to the point of clearly intended nausea, there is also hope for a better future. " E b e y i y e " (a T w i w o r d ) , "the future will be better," is after all the motto on the C u b e n a coat-ofarms that adorns each of his b o o k s . Perhaps paradoxically, h o w e v e r , neither Cuentos nor Chombo project visions of social revolution. Instead, they affirm C u b e n a ' s profoundly humanistic belief in social improvement through education. In this sense, the epigraph from R a l p h W a l d o Emerson in Cuentos T h e man is only half himself, the other half is his expression - is more apt, and in a w a y even more troubling, than the lines from E d w a r d K a m a u Brathwaite with w h i c h it has been replaced in Ian Smart's English version, Short Stories by Cubena: And so without my cloth shoulders uncovered to this new doubt and desert I return expecting nothing; my name burnt out, a cinder on my shoulder. A detailed history of Afro-Hispanic literature during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can obviously not be written in so few pages. N o t only w o u l d it be necessary to include Afro-Brazilian texts, Puerto R i c o ' s boricua literature, more extensive discussions of oral poetry and music, not to mention the many plays that have been written and performed since L o p e de R u e d a ' s Eufemia (1576), areas that have been omitted from this essay for no other reason than lack of space; it is equally imperative, in order to determine w h a t Afro-Hispanic literature actually is (other than simply literature about black themes), to explore more fully the exact position individual texts occupy vis-a-vis w h a t is presumed to be the Latin A m e r i c a n literary mainstream, as well as the nature of the historical and 193 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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conceptual links Afro-Hispanic w o r k s claim both with each other and w i t h other literary traditions in the N e w W o r l d , especially from the C a r i b b e a n and the United States. G i v e n the extent to w h i c h A f r o Hispanic texts are actually intertwined with other mainstream and " m a r g i n a l " traditions, it m a y ultimately be neither advisable nor possible to write a separate history of Afro-Hispanic literature, certainly not in any conventional sense. T h e real challenge is neither to establish a separate canon nor, for that matter, to bring select Afro-Hispanic texts into the fold of already existing canons of Latin A m e r i c a n or A f r o - A m e r i c a n literatures. Both are easily enough accomplished w i t h o u t disturbing the status quo in any productive w a y . W h a t is at issue, then, is our ability (and willingness) to read Afro-Hispanic texts as evidence of the inconsisten cies, irregularities, and upheavals that characterize Latin A m e r i c a n literary, social, and political history, much more so than any unified critical narrative could even suggest.


[ 6 ]

The criollista novel Carlos J. Alonso

T h e historical depth of the preoccupation w i t h indigenous cultural values in Spanish A m e r i c a makes it difficult to undertake the determination of the precise origins of criollista [creole] literary production. D u r i n g the nation-building stage in the nineteenth century, the leading groups of w h a t w o u l d eventually constitute the individual countries of Latin A m e r i c a were busily establishing the discourses and institutions that w o u l d preserve an a v o w e d national identity that w a s , in fact, being created in the process. Hence, one can readily find throughout the century several manifestations of the desire to engender a native literature, from Andrés Bello (1781-1865) through D o m i n g o F. Sarmiento (1811-1888) to José M a r t i (1853-1895). Indeed the period presents many instances that attest to the conviction that linguistic and literary specificity were regarded as correlatives of the political and cultural distinctiveness that Spanish A m e r i c a had recently achieved through its struggle for indepen dence. O n e can cite in this regard the many published collections of cubanismos, argentinismos or venezolanismos, the periodic reformist projects to adjust Spanish orthography to Spanish A m e r i c a n phonetics Bello and Sarmiento are well k n o w n exponents of this endeavor — and the founding of Academias Rationales de la Lengua throughout the continent. Furthermore, although there are essential differences that distinguish the cuadro de costumbres [folkloric sketch] from criollista literary production, it is no less true that in Spanish A m e r i c a the cuadro exhibits a desire for cultural affirmation that differentiates it from its European counterpart and w h i c h determines its unusual longevity in the former colonies. It could be argued as well that one of the persistent preoccu pations of the practitioners of the late nineteenth-century m o v e m e n t called Modernismo [Modernism], notwithstanding the critical notion that affirms its cosmopolitan thrust, ultimately turned out to be a concern for an indigenous literary expression. O n e w o u l d therefore have to agree 195 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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w i t h the D o m i n i c a n critic Pedro Henríquez Ureña w h e n he says that "the literary history of our last hundred years could be described as the history of the ebb and flow of aspirations and theories in search of an expression that is most perfectly o u r s " (Seis ensayos en busca de nuestra expresión, 39). In sum, the " o r i g i n s " of the criollista novel, or novela de la tierra, as it is c o m m o n l y called, have a diachronic dimension that cannot be reduced to a concrete point in time. Nonetheless, the explosive intensity and continent-wide character of the cultural preoccupation w i t h autochthony that marks the first thirty years of this century in Latin A m e r i c a is a p h e n o m e n o n w h o s e historical coordinates cannot be o v e r l o o k e d . Even while a c k n o w l e d g i n g that the enterprise of w h i c h it is an instance has very extended historical roots, the distinctive response to the question of the autochthonous articulated by the novela de la tierra must be examined w i t h a v i e w to establishing its specific nature and the cultural milieu from w h i c h it arose. Traditionally, the criollista m o v e m e n t has been regarded as one of several manifestations of that more comprehensive cultural p h e n o m e n o n that the critic M a r t i n Stabb has called "the rediscovery of A m e r i c a " (In Quest of Identity, 58). A c c o r d i n g to this v i e w , the spirited meditation on cultural essence that characterized the first thirty years of this century in Latin A m e r i c a w a s a reflection of the N e o - K a n t i a n i s m or Neo-Spiritualism that in Europe had c o m e to be associated w i t h the Vitalism of Henri Bergson, the contingency of Emile B o u t r o u x , the Nietzschean emphasis on the W i l l , and the aesthetic influence of Benedetto C r o c e . H o w e v e r , the uneven diffusion of these ideas throughout Latin A m e r i c a cannot explain the breadth and depth of the nativist explosion throughout the entire continent. T h e other conventional explanation for the surfacing of a literature of autochthony in this period is that it represents a nostalgia for an agrarian past, in an era of increased immigration and economic expansion that threatened the h e g e m o n y of the landed aristocracy throughout the continent. T h i s interpretation is undermined by the dissimilar economic development of the various countries in Latin A m e r i c a , by the widely differing class extractions attributable to the authors involved, and by the conspicuous overtures to modernization present in some of these w o r k s (Gallegos's Doña Bárbara [Doña Barbara] immediately comes to mind in this respect.) A l t h o u g h these t w o interpretations certainly address significant issues, it could be argued that the context from w h i c h the novela de la tierra arose entails a more c o m p l e x conjunction of political, intellectual, and cultural circumstances than they allow. T h e most salient are addressed in the section that follows. T h e broadest of these is the emergence of European M o d e r n i s m in all its diverse and even contradictory manifestations. European M o d e r n i s m can be described in very sweeping terms as a composite of t w o fundamen196 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The criollista novel tal tendencies - t w o means through w h i c h M o d e r n i s t aesthetics sought to transcend the impasse, brought about by the critique of nineteenthcentury assumptions about representation in art, that sprang up during the fin de siecle and the first twenty years of the twentieth century. Both of these arose from the desire to m o v e a w a y from a conception of art as mimesis, and from the attempt to breathe n e w life into aesthetic canons that were n o w regarded as contaminated by bourgeois complacence and mediocrity. T h e first tendency encompassed the desire to put art in contact w i t h w h a t w a s thought to be a primeval, and therefore more authentic, vital force or essence. T h i s w a s the origin of the several versions of Primitivism that were engendered by M o d e r n i s m , and of w h i c h Bela B a r t o k ' s explorations of folk music and the Pablo Picasso of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon arc clear exponents. T h e other trend represents the enterprise of experimenting within the formal bounds of a given artistic medium in order to arrive at some determination of first principles of composition or expression for that medium. O n e can think in this regard about A r n o l d Schoenberg's experiments first w i t h atonal and later w i t h dodecaphonic (twelve-tone) music, or Le Corbusier's attempts to arrive at foundational geometric and functional principles in architecture. T h e s e t w o trends are, to be sure, not entirely unrelated; they are presented here as disconnected in order to m a k e more visible their specific relevance to contemporaneous cultural production in Latin A m e r i c a . O f these tendencies, the first - the primitivist - w a s the predominant one in Latin A m e r i c a at the time, and can be readily detected in the three most important cultural developments in the continent during the 1920s and 1930s: Afro-Antillean literature, the Indigenismo movement (Indigenism), and criollista literary production. A l l of these cultural projects aspired to put art in general and literature in particular in touch with an a v o w e d l y primeval essence w h o s e p o w e r derived precisely from its primordial status, and w h i c h w a s construed along various ethnic lines the Black, the Indian, and whatever figure w a s deemed to be representa tive of national identity: the Argentinian g a u c h o , the Venezuelan llanero, the Puerto R i c a n jibaro, etc. A l t h o u g h the Primitivist intention behind each movement w a s identical, there were significant differences in the specific rhetoric that the three deployed. T h e Afro-Antillean and the indigenista movements b o r r o w e d from anthropology a ready-made dis course about the Other, in order to speak about the Others represented by the Black and the Indian. In contrast - and since it w a s supposedly addressing w h a t w a s most intrinsic - the criollista narrative invoked the formula for defining cultural identity that formed the core of philology, the discipline that studied cultural monuments in order to unveil the collective spirit that they supposedly embodied. T h i s connection will be the subject of a lengthier discussion b e l o w . 197 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Y e t another factor that accounts for the emergence of the criollista m o v e m e n t w a s the Latin A m e r i c a n reaction against the doctrine of PanA m e r i c a n i s m , an initiative sponsored by the United States that had as its g o a l the definition of a bond c o m m o n to the A m e r i c a s . Pan-Americanism, the belief in a geographic, economic, and historical order that w o u l d encompass both N o r t h and South A m e r i c a , became the historico-political myth through w h i c h the United States conceived of its relations w i t h Latin A m e r i c a at the close of the nineteenth century and beyond. It represented the resolute advancing by the imperial nation of a powerful myth, a vision regarding the future trajectory of the hemisphere as a totality that w a s resoundingly heralded throughout the A m e r i c a s by the United States. T h e genesis of this formula can be traced to the year 1889, w h e n then Secretary of State James G . Blaine coined the term " P a n - A m e r i c a n C o n f e r e n c e , " and c o n v o k e d the first of a series of such meetings of representatives of A m e r i c a n nations, a conclave that w a s held in W a s h i n g t o n , D . C . , late in that year. T o some extent, Pan-Americanism attempted a revival of the antiEuropean rhetoric of the M o n r o e Doctrine that understood the N e w W o r l d strictly as the scenario for the development of the nations in it. H o w e v e r , in Pan-Americanism, the emphasis w a s rather on the formula tion o f a project for the achievement of a hemispheric order that w o u l d only encompass the A m e r i c a s . A review of the future agenda that w a s presented to the participants of the first conference in 1889 makes it possible to determine the comprehensive intent of the proposal: adoption of a c o m m o n currency, provisions for cultural exchange, a uniform system of weights and measures, a continent-wide set of customs regula tions, the creation of a Pan-American B a n k , the construction of an intercontinental railway, and a number of other similar undertakings. T h i s summary should also leave no d o u b t that the emergence of the PanA m e r i c a n ideal must be understood as a decidedly ideological stratagem on the part of the United States meant to facilitate its hegemony over the continent. Nevertheless, w h a t must be underscored is the sense of crisis that the doctrine elicited in Latin A m e r i c a n intellectual circles and the cultural strategy through w h i c h they attempted to transcend the perceived threat. T h e clearest s y m p t o m of the crisis represented by the United States' initiative w a s the ensuing continent-wide controversy surrounding the legitimacy of the very concept of Pan-Americanism as an instrument for envisioning the future of Latin A m e r i c a n nations. T h e enthusiastic espousal and fostering o f the Pan-American proposal by the United States did not find a strong echo a m o n g countries w h i c h perceived the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r as an abusive conflict deliberately p r o v o k e d by the United States, and w h i c h had witnessed with increasing alarm a 198 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The criollista novel series of successive interventions by the northern p o w e r in Latin A m e r i c a . Nevertheless, the threatening historical myth of Pan-Ameri canism had to be neutralized w i t h a parallel creation, another cultural narrative that w o u l d articulate a particular mytho-poetic reality exclusi vely for Latin A m e r i c a . T h i s necessity w a s the wellspring for the affirmation of a continental cultural order that w o u l d encompass all Latin A m e r i c a n nations, a belief that subsequently circulated under the various labels of pan-latinismo, pan-iberismo, pan-hispanismo or his panoamericanismo. T h e aspirations represented by pan-latinismo were not entirely n e w in Latin A m e r i c a n circles: there had been some feeble and largely unsuccess ful attempts to form some sort of union between Latin A m e r i c a n nations during the nineteenth century. H o w e v e r , the force and unanimity with w h i c h the ideal dominated Latin A m e r i c a n intellectual concerns during the first thirty years of the twentieth century attest to its nature as a continent-wide cultural myth, as a collective response to a threat and a challenge issuing from an outside source. T h i s desire to postulate the existence of a cultural order and a historical project specific to Latin A m e r i c a resulted in an enterprise that produced b o o k s of major import ance such as Ariel (1900) [Ariel] by José E. R o d ó ; M a n u e l Ugarte's Las nuevas tendencias literarias (1908), El porvenir de la América Latina (1910), and El destino de un continente (1923); La evolución política y social de Hispanoamérica (1911) by Rufino Blanco F o m b o n a ; and Francisco G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n ' s Les democracies latines de V Amérique (1912) and La creación de un continente (1912). T h e formulation of a pan-Latin cultural order soon had the oppor tunity to appropriate for its purposes a historical circumstance that provided an ideal context for its deployment, and w h i c h further helps to understand the rise of criollista literature: the one-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Independence movement in Latin A m e r i c a , in 1910. T h e r e is little doubt that the c o m m e m o r a t i o n of the Centenario, as it w a s called, became the most significant cultural event in the decade between 1910 and 1920 in Latin A m e r i c a . T h e elaborate celebrations of the event that t o o k place in all countries and at various times during the period throughout Latin A m e r i c a attest to that fact. In the context of the desire to affirm a spiritual essence shared by all Latin A m e r i c a n nations in order to oppose Pan-Americanism, it w a s inevitable that the Centenario w o u l d be interpreted in terms of the possibilities it afforded for that affirmation. In a masterful stroke of historical imagination, Latin A m e r i can authors and intellectuals claimed to see in 1910 a repetition of the circumstances and possibilities that in their view had characterized the corresponding moment one hundred years previously, in 1810. In other w o r d s , the idea of a unity of continental proportions that had surfaced in 199 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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the first decade of the twentieth century seemed to them to harken back to that historical moment that could be characterized as the very origin of Latin A m e r i c a ; that initial m o m e n t of a v o w e d continental and cultural unity that preceded the fall into a history of fragmentation and fratricidal dissension k n o w n only t o o well; a moment that had returned - so to speak - in the apotheosis of its centennial celebration. T h e c o m m e m o r ation of this historical moment - a m o m e n t that w a s reconstructed and refashioned as much as it w a s celebrated in 1910 - posited also the return of the possibilities that the event had supposedly afforded w h e n seen as the beginning of cultural time. T h i s explains the millennial rhetoric that is typical of the period, and w h i c h found expression in formulas such as mundonovismo: a. concept proposed by the Chilean critic Francisco Contreras to describe the felicitous turn t o w a r d indigenous values jn the Latin A m e r i c a n literature of the times. T h i s rhetoric is also present in the many Utopian texts of the period, such as La raza cosmica and Indologia by the M e x i c a n writer Jose Vasconcelos. Furthermore, it w a s decidedly not lost on Latin A m e r i c a n intellectuals that, at the precise time w h e n Latin A m e r i c a w a s celebrating this feast of new beginnings, Europe appeared to be signaling its historical exhaustion in the First W o r l d W a r , the apocalyptic " W a r to end all W a r s . " Finally, one w o u l d have to mention, as another factor contributing to the appearance of criollista concerns, the continental impact of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n (1910-1920). T h e cultural enterprise engaged in by the post-revolutionary M e x i c a n intelligentsia (mural art, pedagogical reform, foundational theories about mestizaje, etc.) provided a model for the institutionalization of nativist ideology for the rest of the continent. T h e M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , in conjunction with the events of O c t o b e r 1 9 1 7 in Russia, w a s also responsible for inaugurating the rhetoric of social denunciation and reform that henceforth became c o m m o n p l a c e in Latin A m e r i c a n literary circles, and w h i c h is distinctly visible in many of the novelas de la tierra as well. Culling all of the a b o v e , and sacrificing nuance for the convenience of dates, the chronological limits of the novela de la tierra could be designated as the years of 1910 and 1945. T h e earlier year reflects the emergence (or reawakening) of a desire to affirm the existence of a national or continent-wide identity through the vehicle of a literary creation; the outer limit reflects the ascendance of existentialist philos ophy in Latin A m e r i c a , a development that changed the terms in w h i c h both identity and literature were conceived in such a w a y as to render inoperative the presuppositions on w h i c h the criollista movement w a s predicated. F r o m that m o m e n t on, the organic relationship between M a n and L a n d posited by the indigenous formula w a s displaced by a concep200


The criollista novel tion of M a n based on an inescapable state of rootlessness, and on the belief in his permanent alienation from the w o r l d and from himself. T h e need to affirm the specificity of a particular Latin A m e r i c a n identity created by the historical events and cultural trends discussed above imposed certain demands on literature: to provide a founding myth for the collectivity, and to produce a transcendent text in w h i c h the national or continental soul could see reflected both itself and a prophetic vision of its future. Herein lies the stimulus for the project of c o m p o s i n g indigenous texts that characterized literary production in Latin A m e r i c a during the first forty years of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the problematic nature of that project in Latin A m e r i c a soon made itself evident. T h i s difficulty resided in Latin A m e r i c a ' s myth of cultural foundation, that is, in its consummate identification with modernity since the beginning of its historical emergence. T h e resulting affirmation of an absolute break with tradition and the past had the effect of abolishing the history from w h i c h the endeavor to produce an indigenous text should supposedly derive its legitimacy and vigor. T h a t creation, that cultural M a s t e r T e x t , could not be compiled and assembled from a presumably ageless reservoir of traditional myths or compositions: if this autochthonous T e x t were to be at all, it w o u l d have to be constructed, produced, made (remembering the e t y m o l o g y of the w o r d " p o e t r y " in the G r e e k poieiri), rather than be recovered or reconstituted from cultural fragments l o o m i n g out of an immemorial past. Hence, if this T e x t w a s g o i n g to have any claims to authenticity it w o u l d have to incorporate within it a discourse that v o u c h e d for that legitimacy; in other w o r d s , the composition of that literary T e x t had to take place within the confines of another discourse that could authenticate the T e x t ' s claim to being an indigenous literary w o r k ; a discourse w h o s e precepts w o u l d be integrated into the text to certify the latter's preten sions to being truly an indigenous literary creation. T h i s w a s the role that came to be played by the discipline of philology in criollista literary discourse. T h e concept of culture that has nurtured Latin A m e r i c a ' s preoccu pation with an autochthonous cultural expression is a synthesis of a number of beliefs that had their first formulation during the last years of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. T h e y include principally the idea of a culture as a closed and sui generis entity, w h o s e existence w a s the deployment in history of an intrinsic and organic plan. Spoken language w a s the chief vehicle through w h i c h this collective spirit w a s expressed, but by no means the only one; traditions, legends, myths, popular art forms, and c o m m o n l a w were other realms where this will manifested itself. Herder, for instance, characterized folk poems as 20I



"archives of a nationality," "imprints of the soul of a n a t i o n , " and as "the living voice of the nationalities." A l l cultural and political practices and institutions were assumed to be generated organically from a spiritual kernel that manifested itself in history following the dictates of an internal necessity. T h i s development marked all the creations of the c o m m u n i t y in question, imparting to them a specificity that made it impossible and even undesirable to m a k e cross-cultural comparisons. Expressions such as "national s o u l , " "spirit of the p e o p l e , " and " p o p u l a r g e n i u s " w e r e used to refer to this spiritual m o n a d that unveiled itself throughout the history of a g r o u p in an almost impersonal fashion - not unlike a plant - perhaps w i t h o u t ever rising to the consciousness of the individuals that formed the collectivity. Consequently, the creative act, the deed responsible for cultural creations, w a s conceptualized as a n o n y m o u s , unreflecting, and collective. T h e many botanical and biological metaphors that were used to characterize cultural life and its evolution attest to the organicity that physical and spiritual processes w e r e assumed to have in c o m m o n ; but they are also expressive of the relationship that w a s presumed to exist between a culture and the physical environment in w h i c h it obtained. T h e spirit of a people manifested itself also in the w a y s it manipulated and transformed its surroundings - yet the conditions of possibility for that manifestation w e r e determined to an important degree by the physical environment the people inhabited. A s a result, the spiritual dimension of a culture reflected and w a s shaped by the daily contact of the collectivity with the various elements that constituted its environment. Culture and history, then, w e r e to some extent influenced by geography, since the latter invariably left its characteristic imprint on the spiritual make-up of a people that lived within its boundaries. T h i s organic relationship opened the w a y for a correlative spiritualization of the environment, that is, a conception of the physical milieu as a telluric A g e n t secretly informing all the creations of the collective being. G e o g r a p h y thus became a Force, a powerful and mysterious spiritual presence that modified the deployment in time of a people's "national s o u l . " T h e metaphor that described a culture's development as basically similar to that of a plant reflected this " n o u r i s h m e n t " that a h u m a n collective spirit w a s deemed to derive from its sustained contact w i t h the national territory. T h i s conception of cultural identity brought implicit w i t h it the necessity of a comprehensive hermeneutical enterprise: by its very nature, the spirit that w a s intrinsic to each culture could not be apprehended directly, but rather had to be decoded, reconstructed through the study of that culture's diverse tangible manifestations, particularly those of the culture's remote past, since they w e r e considered to be more spontaneous 202


The criollista novel and less contaminated by contact w i t h other communities. T h i s recon struction became the project that defined the discourse of philology. F r o m its beginnings in the very late eighteenth century philology underwent a series of internal transformations: from an " i n t u i t i v e " stage in the R o m a n t i c period to R e n a n ' s confident definition o f it as a ^science exacte des choses de Vesprit") ["exact science of spiritual p h e n o m e n a " ] , to the stylistic method that is associated w i t h the more recent names of Karl Vossler and L e o Spitzer. Y e t throughout this development the essential objective of philology remained unaltered: to arrive at a determination of the organic spiritual dimension that manifested itself in a culture's creations. Understanding the foundations of philological discourse is a prerequi site to discerning in turn the various manifestations of the project to write an indigenous literary text that dominated Latin A m e r i c a n literature during the early part of this century. O n e begins to realize then that textualizing a collective spiritual essence is a project that acquires its full intelligibility within the conceptual horizon delimited by the discipline o f philology. It could be suggested, in fact, that the Latin A m e r i c a n " a u t o c h t h o n o u s " oeuvre w o u l d like to fashion itself after the ideal text envisioned by philological interpretive practice: a w o r k that evinces a transparent, unmediated relationship between cultural being (in this instance, Latin American) and writing. Some of the features of the literature produced in Latin A m e r i c a during the period of criollista production express this connection quite directly. T o begin w i t h , there w a s an o b v i o u s predilection for e m p l o y i n g those literary forms that philology had designated as inherently " p o p u l a r , " that is, compositions that had been spontaneously and a n o n y m o u s l y produced by the collecti vity: the romance, the ballad, the epic p o e m , the legend, etc. A number of the major poets of the period s h o w e d their understanding of the possibili ties offered by this poetic conception, sometimes effecting as a result radical transformations in their poetic practice and personae. T h i s relationship can also be identified in w o r k s such as El payador, by L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s (1874—1938), where there is an attempt to superimpose on Latin A m e r i c a n literary history European schemes regarding the formation of a national literary tradition that are derived from philologi cal formulations. Such is in fact the driving force behind the following passage from Lugones's introduction to his treatise, where he e x p o u n d s in this connection in no uncertain terms: I have chosen as the title of this work the name of those wandering minstrels that used to traverse our countryside reciting romances and endechas, because they were the most important characters in the founding of our race. Just as it happened in all other Greco-Roman 203


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groups, here also that moment coincided with the creation of a work of art. Poetry laid the differential foundation of the Motherland by creating a new language for the expression of the new spiritual entity constituted by the soul of a race as it came into being. (p. 14) Similarly, the indigenous Latin A m e r i c a n landscape became a privi leged literary category, since it w a s through its constant contact w i t h it that the spiritual essence of the continent's people had been shaped. Here lies the justification for the myriad w o r k s produced during this period that aspired to capture the specific geography of a region or country in a cycle of p o e m s , or in a novel or essay. Perhaps the most succinct rendition of this concept is the justly famous essay " V i s i o n de A n a h u a c " (1915) by A l f o n s o Reyes (1889-1959), the source for the following passage: Regardless of the historical doctrine one may profess . . . we are in unison with the race of yesteryear not only through our blood, but more importantly through the common effort to dominate the coarse and unyielding nature that surrounds us; such an effort is the foundation of history. W e also share with them the profound emotional unanimity that arises from the daily encounter with a similar natural object. T h e confrontation between human sensibility and a common world carves and engenders a common soul. (2: 34) It w o u l d be impossible to summarize the total extent and the multi farious forms that this literary endeavor assumed throughout Latin A m e r i c a . W h a t is of particular concern to this essay is the reflection in the novelistic genre of this desire to create an indigenous literary text, a dynamic that produced that large collection of w o r k s that have c o m e to be k n o w n as the novela de la tierra. T h e discourse of the autochthonous in these novels represents a rhetorical condensation of the paradigm of cultural interpretation just discussed; that is to say, the discourse of philology provides the essential concepts and relationships that legitimize the writing of these w o r k s . T h i s explains w h y , at the most superficial level, the novela de la tierra appears to be an indiscriminate and uncomplicated collection of philological c o m m o n p l a c e s : speech as a privileged instance of language; geography as a sempiternal telluric presence; the detailed depiction of a human activity that has arisen in perfect consonance w i t h the environment. Nevertheless, although the basic postulates of philological discourse seem to account for the fundamental characteristics of these texts, that relationship is not as uncomplicated as it w o u l d seem at first glance; for the seemingly subordinate relationship between the novela de la tierra and philology conceals, nonetheless, a precise inversion of philological operations of interpretation. T h e philologist's overriding purpose w a s the revelation of the ultimate spiritual structure that w a s assumed to be the underlying bedrock or foundation for the text under scrutiny. A s a result of this 204 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The criollista novel interpretive stance, the w o r k w a s considered nothing but a more or less transparent screen or veil, w i t h the text's final truth to be arrived at by the critic only beyond it. H o w e v e r , while philology endeavored to collate and interpret texts in order to arrive at a the collective ontological spirit underlying them, the writers of the novela de la tierra take as their point of departure this supposed essence and then proceed to write the text that will ostensibly e m b o d y it. Therefore, in the novela de la tierra there is a reversal of the interpretive trajectory that philology proposed - that is, these novels envision the process of their c o m i n g into being as a displacement from spiritual essence to text. O n account of this reversal of hermeneutic paths, one can detect in the novelas de la tierra a heightened awareness of their o w n textuality, of the process that resulted in their writing, that defies all traditional readings of them. T h i s k n o w l e d g e s h o w s itself in the text as a critical commentary that seeks to guarantee the propriety of the relationship between text and essence that philology simply posited as a given. Hence, the novela de la tierra purports to be a literary text that incorporates the autochthonous essence, but it also has alongside it a parallel critical discourse that comments on the legitimacy and validity of the formulation of autochthony that it advances. In this fashion, the autochthonous w o r k is engaged in the ceaseless validation of that w h i c h it also assumes to be a given. T h i s situation implies that the autochthonous writer is both author and commentator of his or her o w n w o r k , a circumstance that belies the customary claims of simplicity and transparency advanced w i t h great consistency by the authors of these w o r k s and their critics. T h e novela de la tierra is an attempt to create a genuinely autochthonous w o r k that simultaneously undermines the concept of a spontaneous indigenous text by exposing its discursive nature, its k n o w l e d g e of itself as a textual effect. T h i s critical intention surfaces in these w o r k s , for instance, as specific moments w h e n the novel lapses into a commentary that tries to elucidate explicitly the relationships that undergird the w o r l d it is depicting. O n e can clearly detect this intention in the following fragment from G a l l e g o s ' s Doha Barbara: T h e return from work brought the patio in front of the cabins to life. A s darkness came on, the cowboys came back in noisy groups, began to banter, and ended by singing their thoughts in ballad form, since for everything that must be said the man of the Plain already has a ballad which says it, and says it better than speech. For life in the Plain is simple and devoid of novelty, and the spirit of the people is prone to the use of picturesque and imaginative forms. And between mouthfuls a discussion of the events of the day's work, barbs and boasts, a friendly joke and the quick sharp retort, a story 205 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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arising from the picturesque life of the cowboy and guide, the man of hard toil always with a ballad on the tip of his tongue. And while the watchers by the corrals took turns going around . . . in the cabins, another more boisterous watch was taking place: the guitar and the maracas, the corrido and the decima. T h e birth of poetry. (pp. 675-6) In passages such as this one, the text can be seen to engage in w h a t could be referred to as an explication of its o w n discursive assumptions. In them, the novels articulate explicitly, and c o m m e n t on, those relationships that also a l l o w them to conceive the w o r l d they recreate as an organic w h o l e in the first place. T h e critical, explanatory purpose of this particular fragment can be distinguished, for instance, in the causal structure of the first paragraph; but it is also evinced by the manifest exegetical intention of the entire passage. T h r o u g h it, the text explicates the spontaneous birth of popular poetry (speech) from the interaction between M a n ' s activity and his geographic milieu. T h i s is, of course, a relationship that is presumed by the indigenous text to be an immanent aspect of the universe it portrays. Y e t the organic nature of the link that the fragment affirms is compromised by the fragment's very presence in the text, since in order to comment critically on its o w n procedures the text must have abandoned that organicity in the first place. Hence, the passage points to the problematic rhetorical nature of " a u t o c h t h o n o u s " discourse, that is, to the w a y in w h i c h its rhetoric undermines the legitimacy of that w h i c h it affirms. Sometimes this commentary assumes a less conspicuous form that nonetheless cannot conceal entirely its interpretive objective. A t certain moments the narrative acquires an essentially definitory tone: there is a sudden break in the narrative that allows for the insertion of a detailed commentary on a specific element of the indigenous universe. A n o t h e r expression of it is the v o y a g e or excursion throughout the privileged landscape that customarily precedes the writing of these novels: an expedition w h e r e the author's roaming throughout the land acquires all the trappings of the philologist's field research on language and milieu. Other textual features, such as the glossaries that are appended to the majority of these w o r k s and the singling out of particular w o r d s or expressions in the text through the use of quotation marks or italics, constitute further signs of the existence of this critical dimension within the text of the novela de la tierra. Therefore, far from simply having a referential or ontological reality, the term " a u t o c h t h o n o u s " could be used to describe a rhetorical figure encompassing three elements: spoken language, geographical location, and a given human activity. T h e p o w e r of the figure that organizes these categories derives from the fact that any one of the three elements can be subsumed under the remaining t w o . T h e three categories are thoroughly 206 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The criollista novel intertwined in a c o m p l e x synecdochical fashion: the land is the scene where the h u m a n activity takes place, but it is also the milieu from w h i c h the peculiarities of spoken language are supposed to have emerged. L a n g u a g e , in turn, is not only tied to the geography, but is also the lexicon, the argot that is itself an integral c o m p o n e n t of the h u m a n activity depicted. In the novela de la tierra then, "the a u t o c h t h o n o u s " is a discursive m o d e generated by a c o m p l e x rhetorical figure that organizes a synecdochical interaction between the three semantic fields described above. T h e relationships that the figure establishes between the three categories are meant to project discursively the organicity that presum ably binds together and relates to the environment every one of a culture's manifestations. T h e relative importance of each element in the figure can vary from text to text, but a given configuration of it underwrites and sustains the discourse of the autochthonous in each w o r k . M o r e o v e r , the three categories are capable of encompassing a large number of distinct manifestations, a fact that e n d o w s the rhetorical figure that contains them w i t h a seemingly inexhaustible generative capacity. O r a l language, for instance, can be incorporated in a number of different w a y s , such as the retelling of legends and tales or the performance of popular poetry and song; it also explains certain textual features, such as the phonetic writing that is so prevalent in the texts, the glossaries that are almost a fixture as addenda to these texts, and the typographical highlighting of certain w o r d s by using boldface, italicizing, or enclosing them inside quotation marks. Similarly, the land can subsume the myriad manifestations of non-urban geography, while also sustaining both the detailed descriptions of topographic features and the marked emphasis on spatial organization in the novels. By the same token, the intricate accounts of a given metier and the use of a specialized v o c a b u l a r y to accomplish this description are some of the textual attributes that arise from the third category, one that can include the many facets and operations of the human activity portrayed. T h i s understanding of the indigenous as a rhetorical figure opens the w a y for rethinking the nativist literary text as a productivity, that is, as an activity that produces a highly specific discursive performance. T h e o u t c o m e of this performance is "the a u t o c h t h o n o u s , " a discursive construct that is sustained by the figure described a b o v e , and not by the w o r l d l y , referential status of the essence to w h i c h it purportedly alludes. T h e rhetorical figure described thus far is the form w i t h w h i c h these novels convey textually the wholeness and consonance that are assumed to obtain in the indigenous universe. T h e overarching assumption at w o r k here is that a balance exists between environment and M a n in their mutual interaction and influence. Nonetheless, once that consonance is assumed, a number of narrative permutations become possible. First, the organic circumstance can be 207 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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portrayed as a present state of affairs; second, it can be depicted as under threat by some external force or event; or lastly, it can be represented as having been categorically lost. It is probably not a coincidence that the three novels that have been traditionally considered paradigms of the novela de la tierra each represents one of these narrative possibilities. These are: Don Segundo Sombra [Don Segundo Sombra: Shadows in the Pampas], Doña Bárbara [Doña Bárbara], and La vorágine [The Vortex]. Don Segundo Sombra by the Argentinian writer R i c a r d o Güiraldes is a consummate example of the first of these variants. T h e novel is generally constructed as a Bildungsroman, a. novel of apprenticeship, in w h i c h the y o u n g protagonist is tutored in the w a y s of the g a u c h o by the larger-thanlife man named in the novel's title. T h e b o y , presented in the beginning as a w a y w a r d orphan precariously leaning t o w a r d s an inconsequential adolescence of petty misconduct and b o r e d o m , is lifted from this aimless context by his fortuitous encounter w i t h D o n Segundo. H e joins the latter in his wanderings throughout the p a m p a s in a seemingly carefree search for yet another horse to tame or a n e w herd of cattle to drive. Patiently he gains from his mentor the k n o w l e d g e of the metier and the ethos of the g a u c h o w a y of life. O n e day, near the close of the novel, the boy discovers that he is not truly an orphan, but rather the illegitimate offspring of a l a n d o w n i n g grandee w h o has recognized him as sole heir in his will. His apprenticeship is finished at this point, and w i t h great sadness and apprehension he abandons his life as a g a u c h o to assume his new status as landowner and master. A s part of his n e w identity he acquires a more traditional education that a l l o w s him to write the autobiographical account that comprises the text óf the novel. Hence, Don Segundo Sombra is a w o r k written from a perspective that infuses the narration w i t h a melancholy sensation of nostalgia and a foreboding sense of loss. Y e t this narrative situation is, nonetheless, the perfect vantage point from w h i c h to depict the organic, interconnected w o r l d that the universe of the g a u c h o is claimed to be. In this fashion, the g a u c h o ' s w o r l d is considered from the outside, but as a rounded totality the w a y one holds at some distance a translucent sphere for examination. T h e r e is a continuum of transcendence that envelops the protagonist in his experiencing of that w o r l d , from the activities of taming a horse or butchering a c o w , to the language that he speaks while in the p a m p a s . Here lies, h o w e v e r , the principal difficulty inherent in this modality of the criollista novel: the conflict between the metaphysical stasis of the w o r l d portrayed by the text and the change and movement demanded by narrative plot. Indeed, very little actually happens in Don Segundo Sombra, since the novel is a celebration of the immutable and seamless spirit of the g a u c h o . T h i s explains w h y the b o y ' s discovery of his real 208


The criollista novel identity is not portrayed as a loss of that transcendence, but rather as a raising of it to a different, perhaps even higher plane. For the novel strongly suggests that the e x - o r p h a n / e x - g a u c h o will become an enlightened landowner, one w h o will administer his property w i t h , and from within, the k n o w l e d g e that he has painstakingly accumulated as a g a u c h o . O n e can envision readily the ideological implications of this argument, particularly w h e n the novel is considered in the Argentinian context from w h i c h it arose. T h e introduction of an ethical dimension to l a n d o w n i n g can be regarded as a call to action by one of its members to an absentee elite w h i c h had neglected its patrimony and squandered its resources, and w h i c h w a s rapidly being overtaken by a commercial and industrial urban bourgeoisie. O n e can also take into consideration the massive influx of immigrants into the country that had peaked t o w a r d s the turn of the century, and that could be regarded as a threat to the concept of Argentinian identity that had held s w a y until that time: a concept that, because it had been formulated by that propertied class, predictably revolved around it. T h e s e are the particular Argentinian circumstances that may have inflected on the more comprehensive affirmation of autochthonous values that swept the Latin A m e r i c a n continent during the period under consideration. R ó m u l o G a l l e g o s ' s Doña Bárbara is an instance of the second narrative possibility delineated earlier. Here the balance and symmetry of the autochthonous w o r l d is assumed to exist just as clearly as in the first modality, but there is a circumstance or event that threatens with the loss of that equilibrium. Hence, the quintessential situation described by this case is that of crisis. T h e predominant tone is one of urgency, since the narrative wishes to call attention to an element understood to be deleterious to the presumed ontological permanence of the indigenous w o r l d . T h e understanding of the present moment as a critical juncture determines the particularities of this narrative modality, especially the M a n i c h a e a n vision advanced by the story. In fact, given both its desire to denounce the status quo and the attendant prescriptive intention, it is easy for this kind of w o r k to acquire the fundamental attributes of allegorical narration. T h e accusation of being simple (and simpleminded) allegories is the charge that is most c o m m o n l y leveled against novels such as Doña Bárbara, an assessment that is difficult to disallow - at least on the most superficial plane of analysis. T h e setting for Doña Bárbara is the plains or llanos of the A p u r e river in Venezuela. T h e novel begins w i t h Santos L u z a r d o , the last heir of a l a n d o w n i n g family w h o s e origins g o back to the Spanish C o n q u e s t , travelling from the city to the plain to sell his property, a vast expanse of land called A l t a m i r a . T h e r e he discovers that his patrimony is being slowly taken over by a mysterious and ruthless w o m a n by the name of 209 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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D o n a Barbara, w h o has had an illegitimate daughter (Marisela) by Santos's uncle (Lorenzo), and has reduced him to a drunken s h a d o w of his former self. Santos is captivated again by the indomitable p o w e r and potentiality of the land, and decides not to sell his property and to struggle against D o n a Barbara instead. In the remainder of the novel L u z a r d o is s h o w n w e a k e n i n g D o n a Barbara's domination over the llano in a number of encounters w i t h her henchmen or w i t h other symbols of her p o w e r . Finally, it is intimated that D o n a Barbara commits suicide (in any event she is never heard from again), and L u z a r d o manages to reconstitute the original family property of A l t a m i r a through marriage to D o n a Barbara's sole heiress, Marisela. T h e w o r k ends hopefully, on a note of resolute affirmation of the country's future triumph over its present ills. A l t h o u g h the novel's thesis is fairly transparent - modernization will redress the present circumstance of barbarism - the particular attributes of D o n a Barbara m a k e her a contradictory character w i t h regard to the novel's ideological intention of addressing a presumably critical situation. O n e w o u l d expect that the organicity of the autochthonous universe w o u l d be endangered by an alien, external force, one w h o s e disruptive presence w o u l d serve to p r o v o k e the crisis that the novel wishes to underscore. Nonetheless, in G a l l e g o s ' s w o r k , D o n a Barbara is ambi guously identified both as an agent of chaos and as having arisen from the land itself. T h i s ambiguity can also be seen at w o r k in the articulation of L u z a r d o ' s reformist project for the plains: he is depicted both as a relentless supporter of progress and change, yet also as thoroughly susceptible to the enchantment of the primordial and violent p o w e r of the land. T h i s is w h y , for all its explicit optimism, the novel's conclusion is paradoxical: it proposes simultaneously an openness to a future of progress and the re-enactment of a preterit state of affairs in the reconstitution of L u z a r d o ' s ancestral patrimony. O n e could interpret in this problematic ending the ambivalent juxtaposition of a desire for modernity, on the one hand, and the w i s h to protect traditional values from the encroachment of the modern, on the other. Such a discordance w o u l d appear to stem from an ambivalence t o w a r d modernity that is characteristic of societies that regard themselves as eccentric to the metropolitan foci of modern experience. In them modernity is wished for, since it holds the promise of full participation in the w o r l d , yet it is also seen w i t h apprehension for the potential it has to render worthless the marginal experience of those societies. T h e third narrative modality enacted by the criollista novel is repre sented paradigmatically by Jose Eustasio Rivera's w o r k La vordgine. Here the transcendence of the indigenous universe has been definitively lost on account of some circumstance or event. In this rendering the immanent design of that w o r l d acquires n o w a contrary sign; in other w o r d s , there is 2IO


The criollista novel as much correspondence and continuity between environment and man as before, but this time the o u t c o m e is w h a t could be described as a negative transcendence, a state of permanent damnation. T h e loss of meaning and the b r e a k d o w n of order is so complete in this case that the w o r l d portrayed possesses a p a r a d o x i c a l dystopian wholeness all its o w n . T h i s is w h y R i v e r a ' s novel has been traditionally accused of a m b i g u o u s intentionality, of lack of structure, and of general purposelessness: the loss of significance that the novel assumes in the universe it depicts extends to the text's inner w o r k i n g s as a purveyor of meaning as well. A r t u r o C o v a , a hypersensitive and melodramatic poet, is the p r o t a g o nist and narrator of La vordgine. H a v i n g seduced his mistress (Alicia), he flees w i t h her from an unnamed city to the C o l o m b i a n plains in order to avoid facing the consequences of his actions. Subsequently Alicia is either kidnapped or willingly charmed by a ruthless rubber entrepreneur (Barrera), w h o s e area of operations is the latex-producing jungle region of the P u t u m a y o . W i t h hurt pride and in a heightened emotional state, C o v a travels deep into the thicket, ostensibly to recover his lost mistress and to punish the affront to his honor. But every step into the jungle brings only despair, illness, disaster, and death. T h e terrible exploitation associated with the A m a z o n i a n rubber industry is denounced in a number of scenes or events in w h i c h the enormous human toll of the trade is deplored. Y e t N a t u r e itself is also an agent of destruction in La vordgine: hordes of carnivorous ants, disease, treacherous rapids, etc., conspire against the advance of C o v a and the g r o u p of men that has accompanied him. T h e feeling of helplessness and lack of sense is conveyed by the ease w i t h w h i c h the party loses its w a y in the uncharted and unmarked expanses of the jungle. Finally, C o v a manages to find his rival; a struggle ensues and Barrera is killed, his b o d y eaten by piranha fish. T h e r e is a postscript to the novel by a supposed friend of the poet, w h o informs the reader that he has received a c o m m u n i q u e from the C o l o m b i a n consulate in M a n a u s (Brazil) regarding the fate of the party: not a trace of them is to be found. T h e justly famous last w o r d s of the novel leave no doubt concerning the pessimism and darkness of the w o r k ' s thrust: " T h e jungle devoured them!" Perhaps the greatest difficulty in interpreting La vordgine lies in the impossibility of isolating any one argument or purpose as p a r a m o u n t in the text's rhetorical or ideological organization. T h i s quality m a y stem, as implied earlier, from the novel's attempt to project a negative totality; but the troublesome recalcitrance to exegesis still remains. A t times the w o r k appears to be a manifesto against the A m a z o n i a n rubber trade, and Rivera often argued for such an intention after the novel's publication. Y e t the depiction of N a t u r e as an intrinsically harmful force argues against, or in any event w e a k e n s , the corruptive characterization of the rubber industry 211



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that the novel w o u l d advance: does man invade and pervert N a t u r e , or is N a t u r e itself bent on destruction in the first place? T h e same can be said, for instance, regarding the novel's ambiguous characterization of the poet A r t u r o C o v a . H e is capable of going from intense experiences of lucidity and self-demystification to equally extreme episodes of blindness, melo drama, and self-deceit. T h i s aspect has larger consequences, though, given the first-person narrative perspective e m p l o y e d universally in the novel: the expression "unreliable n a r r a t o r " cannot begin to d o justice to the destabilizing effect that C o v a ' s performance as narrator has on most readers of Rivera's text. F r o m a more comprehensive perspective, though, the contradictory qualities evinced by La vordgine may be illustrative of the quandary that "the a u t o c h t h o n o u s , " as conceived by the novela de la tierra, ultimately entailed for Latin A m e r i c a n writers and intellectuals of the period under consideration. For these writers the assumption w a s that national or even continental identity w a s to be founded on a cultural belief in the correspondence between geography and man. T h i s belief necessarily had to o v e r l o o k or suppress the fact that, prior to that moment, the distinctive ness of Latin A m e r i c a had been predicated on asserting the existence of an untamed, savage N a t u r e that lent its p o w e r and specificity to all N e w W o r l d creations. A l r e a d y in Sarmiento's Facundo (1945) one finds a signal e x a m p l e of this maneuver: If any form of national literature shall appear in these new American societies, it must result from the description of the mighty scenes of nature, and still more from the illustration of the struggle between European civilization and native barbarism, between mind and matter - a struggle of imposing magnitudes in South America, and which suggests scenes so peculiar, so characteristic, and so far outside the circle of ideas in which the European mind has been educated, that their dramatic relations would be unrecognized machinations except in the countries in which they are found. (p. 24) Hence, transforming the Latin A m e r i c a n cultural myth of N a t u r e as a violent and wild presence to one in w h i c h the latter w a s perceived as benign and organic could not be an uncomplicated, effortless affair. In point of fact, this internal contradiction is one that the nativist literary discourse never managed to resolve satisfactorily. T h i s is w h y one finds within the genre a spectrum of w o r k s that goes from the transcendent bonding w i t h N a t u r e represented by Don Segundo Sombra to the maneating v o r t e x of Rivera's w o r k . Both conceptions of N a t u r e can be used as foundations for claims of distinctiveness and identity; and indeed, both were - regardless of the resulting and irremediable contradictions mobilized simultaneously by the novela de la tierra. 212 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

[ 7 ]

The novel of the Mexican Revolution John

Rutherford

T h e M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n w a s one of the last old-fashioned, pre-industrial w a r s , in w h i c h modern techniques and machinery had only an occasional role to play. It w a s a w a r of epic battles and mythical warrior-heroes, t w o of w h o m - Pancho Villa and Emiliano Z a p a t a - have achieved fame throughout the w o r l d . A n d since it w a s a w a r in w h i c h people were more important than machines, it provided a generation of M e x i c a n novelists w i t h an abundant source of inspiration and material. It began in N o v e m b e r 1 9 1 0 . T h e president, Porfirio D i a z (1830-1915), had ruled, in person or by p r o x y , since 1876, retaining p o w e r for so long by imposing a right-wing dictatorship on a country w h i c h , despite some industrialization, retained social and economic structures based on the quasi-feudal system of the hacienda. For some years before 1910 a brave and idealistic northern liberal, Franciso I. M a d e r o ( 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 1 3 ) , had been campaigning for a revision of the political system and the establishment of a d e m o c r a c y based on the principles of universal suffrage and no presidential re-election. Seeing that his peaceful campaign w a s achieving nothing, for in fraudulent presidential elections in July 1 9 1 0 D i a z w a s re elected yet again, M a d e r o called for an uprising against the dictator on N o v e m b e r 20. It seemed a hopeless cause. H o w e v e r , D i a z w a s a tired old man, and his government and his generals had g r o w n old w i t h him. T h e federal army w a s incapable of quashing this minor revolt, w h i c h gathered support as the months w e n t by. In M a y 1 9 1 1 the rebels w o n their first serious battle, capturing the northern frontier t o w n of C i u d a d Juarez. D i a z w e n t into exile and M a d e r o , n o w a popular hero and "the A p o s t l e of D e m o c r a c y , " entered M e x i c o C i t y in triumph. H e w a s elected president in O c t o b e r 1911. M a d e r o believed that his political reform w a s all M e x i c o needed, but the events of his brief presidency were to prove him w r o n g . Disillusion and unrest g r e w as his supporters realized that the old order w a s not going 213 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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LITERATURE

to be dismantled, something w h i c h w o u l d have been difficult because M a d e r o ' s all t o o rapid military victory had left the Porfirista p o w e r structure intact. Y e t Porfiristas could not forgive M a d e r o for having defeated their leader, and in February 1913 it w a s a right-wing coup d'etat w h i c h deposed and murdered him and his principal colleagues. T h e new president w a s the federal army general, V i c t o r i a n o Huerta ( 1 8 4 5 - 1 9 1 6 ) , a curious mixture of the villain and the buffoon. H e attempted to take M e x i c o back to the days of D o n Porfirio and to impose a similar dictatorship backed by army, church, and aristocracy. H e w a s acclaimed by those of like mind as "the iron hand needed to govern M e x i c o , " but the iron hand w a s t o o often clutching a bottle of w h i s k y to be capable of governing itself, let alone a country. A revolution - for the first time a national revolution - w a s soon raging against him. President W o o d r o w W i l s o n also wished to rid M e x i c o of Huerta, but the clumsy method he chose - the occupation of the G u l f C o a s t port of V e r a c r u z only aroused a widespread patriotic fury w h i c h the dictator did his best to turn to his o w n advantage. Nevertheless, the federal army w a s over w h e l m e d in the battle of Z a c a t e c a s in June 1 9 1 4 , and the wretched Huerta fled into exile. Y e t this w a s not the end. T h e national revolution had been in reality a coalition of different movements, each w i t h its o w n interests and aims. T h e most important were those of Pancho Villa (1878-1923) and of Venustiano C a r r a n z a (1859-1920) in the north, and of Emiliano Z a p a t a (1879-1919) in the south. O p p o s i t i o n to Huerta had been the only uniting force, and the revolutionary forces split into their c o m p o n e n t parts soon after victory. A convention of generals held in Aguascalientes in O c t o b e r 1914 failed to achieve unity. W h a t n o w developed w a s a bitter struggle between C a r r a n z a and Villa, the latter of w h o m formed an insecure alliance w i t h Z a p a t a . T h e struggle reached its bloody climax in the series of battles at C e l a y a , L e ó n , and Aguascalientes in A p r i l - J u l y 1 9 1 5 , ending w i t h the decisive victory of the Carrancistas over the Villistas. Localized fighting w a s to continue for several years, but by 1 9 1 6 C a r r a n z a w a s established as the final victor. T h e old order w a s defeated and the w a y cleared for the modernization of M e x i c o . A nationalistic and reformist but not socialist constitution w a s d r a w n up in 1 9 1 7 , and in the same year C a r r a n z a w a s elected president. T w o definitions of the novel of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n are in use. O n e is narrow: " n o v e l s written by M e x i c a n s about the destructive, military phase of the R e v o l u t i o n , from 1910 until about 1 9 2 0 . " A l t h o u g h novels must be set in the military phase to be included, they d o not have to narrate military events. T h e broad definition is based on the M e x i c a n government's assertion 214


The novel of the Mexican

Revolution

that the R e v o l u t i o n did not end in 1920 but continues pacifically yet dynamically in its constructive phase, as the ruling party's name suggests: Partido R e v o l u c i o n a r i o Institucional. A n y social or political novel set in post-1910 M e x i c o is, then, a novel of the R e v o l u t i o n . T h i s definition is imprecise and open-ended, and puts disparate novels into the same category. T h e definition used in this chapter is, therefore, the former. T h e only reason w h y the other one has found any favour seems to be ideological rather than literary: accepting it is held to imply a progressive o u t l o o k , a solidarity with the determination of the M e x i c a n people and their government never to tire in their struggle t o w a r d a better future; whereas accepting the n a r r o w definition is considered to imply a negative, antirevolutionary, and reactionary attitude. T h e choice of definition in this chapter should not be regarded as having any such ideological implications. It is purely practical and literary. In this context, the w o r d " n o v e l " must be a l l o w e d a broader scope than usual. W o r k s w h i c h are established as significant novels of the R e v o l u tion, such as M a r t i n Luis G u z m a n ' s El águila y la serpiente (1928), José R u b é n R o m e r o ' s Apuntes de un lugareño (1932) and José V a s c o n c e l o s ' s Ulises criollo, w o u l d be classed as autobiographies in any other context. H o w e v e r , the division between autobiography and novel is notoriously hazy: R o m e r o inserts at least one fictional character into his b o o k . It w o u l d also be perverse to exclude w o r k s w h i c h it is general practice to include. O n the grounds that a w o r d means w h a t its community of users understand it to mean, " n o v e l " includes for present purposes all those autobiographies, memoirs, and biographies w h i c h have any aesthetic pretences or qualities. T h u s defined, there are some 140 novels of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , written by nearly 100 novelists. T h e production of the novels of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n f o l l o w e d a pattern w h i c h has been observed by D . G . T h o m a s in other twentiethcentury w a r fiction, notably in the novels of the First W o r l d W a r and in those of the Spanish Civil W a r . In each of these three cases there are t w o distinct periods of productivity. W a r novels first appear while the w a r is being fought. T h e s e early novels are written in haste, in difficult circumstances, as vehicles for political p r o p a g a n d a . T h e novelists are t o o involved in the catastrophic events and the extreme emotions they describe to be able to turn them into w o r k s of art. Furthermore, these often inexpert writers, lacking literary culture, remain close to the traditions of the popular novel, and their w o r k s reflect its artlessness in, for e x a m p l e , ponderous melodrama, moral M a n i c h e i s m , clumsy authorial intervention to deliver simplistic messages, heavy-handed manipulation of plot, crude characterization, forced and 215


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inappropriate inclusion of sentimental love intrigues, and language w h i c h fluctuates between banality and laboured attempts to reproduce w h a t such novelists regard as elevated literary style. T h e first w a v e of w a r novels ends as the w a r ends, or a little later. Such w o r k s are an immediate, ephemeral response to a crisis, and their impact, if they have any, is soon forgotten: in the years after the w a r , people try to forget the recent horrors as they remake their lives. Escapist fiction flourishes during this post-war period. A s life returns to normal and memories of suffering become less acute, novelists and their readers develop a willingness and a need to look back at the w a r and reassess it. A t this point, about ten years after the end of hostilities, the second w a v e of w a r novels begins. It lasts for another fifteen years or so, by w h i c h time the subject has been w o r k e d through and most novelists m o v e on to other matters. T h e s e second-wave novels are written in tranquility, with all the advantages of distance and hindsight, often by experienced novelists concerned not to make propaganda but to examine, explore, and reflect. M o s t of the w a r novels w h i c h survive as w o r k s of literature belong to the second w a v e : those of Erich M a r i a R e m a r q u e , M a x A u b , Francisco A y a l a , and R a m ó n Sender. T h e novels of the M e x i c a n Revolution follow the pattern of develop ment in t w o w a v e s in all but one important regard. T h e exception is M a r i a n o A z u e l a (1873-1952). H e is thus comparable with Henri Barbusse, the First-World-War novelist w h o s e influential w o r k Le feu w a s first published in 1 9 1 6 ; but A z u e l a ' s writing has lasted better. A c c o r d i n g to the normal pattern, A z u e l a should have written his w a r novels not in the period 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 8 , as he did, but in 1 9 2 8 - 1 9 4 5 , for they possess most of the virtues of second-wave w a r novels and few of the weaknesses of firstw a v e ones. A l s o , as w e shall see, A z u e l a and his novel Los de abajo (1916, i.e. written in 1915) [The Underdogs] were ignored until 1925, w h e n they set the M e x i c a n second w a v e in motion. T h e y then so dominated the later writers that most of them t o o k A z u e l a as a model to be imitated rather than a point of departure. A z u e l a w a s not only a first-wave novelist but in all probability the author of the first novel of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , Andrés Pérez, maderista (1911). T h e only rival for this distinction is La majestad caída (1911) by Juan A . M a t e o s ( 1 8 3 1 - 1 9 1 3 ) , w h o had gained a certain reputation in the Porfirian period as a prolific writer of plays, poetry, and sentimental historical novels. His treatment of the fall of the dictator, an unintentional parody of the popular romantic historical novel, is a sad reflection of the decline of this writer's limited abilities. Nevertheless, it w a s La majestad caída rather than the intelligent, perceptive, and ironical Andrés Pérez, maderista that set the style for the novels of the R e v o l u t i o n - some thirty of them — that were to be written during the next dozen years 216 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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or so. T h e r e were a few exceptions, most notably the other novels by Azuela: Los de abajo, Los caciques (1917) [The Bosses], Las moscas (1918) [The Flies], Domitilo quiere ser diputado (1918), and Las tribulaciones de una familia decente (1918) [The Trials of a Respectable Family]. T h e only other w o r t h w h i l e novel of the R e v o l u t i o n written during this early period is En el sendero de las mandrdgoras (2 volumes, 1920) by the journalist A n t o n i o A n c o n a A l b e r t o s (1883-1954). T h i s is an intelligent and thought ful account of the life during the R e v o l u t i o n of a dissolute but idealistic y o u n g newspaperman, yet, like all the other first-wave novels, it fell into obscurity where, like all but those of A z u e l a , it remains. It w a s not until the mid-i92os that a conviction started to develop in M e x i c a n intellectual and literary circles that it w a s time to abandon the sentimental, escapist fiction w h i c h w a s still fashionable, just as it had been during the Porfirian period, and to write novels that w o u l d confront the recent upheavals and address themselves to the realities of contemporary life. G o v e r n m e n t spokesmen for the arts did much to create this n e w atmosphere, w h i c h p r o v o k e d a polemic in the M e x i c a n press in D e c e m b e r 1924 and January 1925 on the subject " D o e s a M o d e r n M e x i c a n Literature E x i s t ? " In the course of this polemic the prestigious critic Francisco M o n t e r d e based his defense of contemporary M e x i c a n fiction on the literary values of Los de abajo. Azuela and his novel became famous almost overnight. M o s t of the national newspapers published interviews with him, and one of them serialized Los de abajo. Important Spanish critics n o w noticed and praised his novel and a M a d r i d edition followed in 1927. A z u e l a , having abandoned the R e v o l u t i o n as a fictional subject nine years earlier, found his reputation established throughout the Spanish-speaking w o r l d as the novelist of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n . T h e s e events set the second w a v e in motion. T h e government helped to sustain it, by providing y o u n g novelists with undemanding e m p l o y m e n t yet not attempting to control or censor their novels, despite the fact that most of them, following A z u e l a ' s example in this as in many other matters, pointed to the conclusion that the R e v o l u t i o n had done nothing to remove injustice or to m a k e governments less corrupt; w h i c h were wellfounded accusations. T h e events of 1 9 1 0 - 1 9 2 0 became the subject-matter of many novels written during the 1930s by new novelists w h o dominated the M e x i c a n literary scene during this decade, the most n o t e w o r t h y of w h i c h w e will examine in as much detail as space a l l o w s . First, h o w e v e r , w e must consider the undisputed master, M a r i a n o A z u e l a . A z u e l a w a s a doctor w h o , by the time he w r o t e Andres Perez, maderista, w a s nearly forty and already had three novels to his name. Each is a naturalistic treatment of contemporary M e x i c a n life and expresses concerns w h i c h reappear in A z u e l a ' s novels of the Revolution: the inexorable defeat of the idealistic reformer in L o s fracasados (1908), 217 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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the suffering of the defenseless p o o r at the hands of rich landowners and corrupt authorities in Mala yerba (1909) [Marcela: A Mexican Love Story], and the fatuous aristocratic aspirations of the middle classes in Sin amor (1912; but written in 1910 or earlier). T h i s training can explain the assurance with w h i c h Andres Perez, maderista is written. Andres tells his o w n story. H e is a lethargic, selfcentred journalist from M e x i c o City on holiday in the provinces w h o , as a result of events outside his control, and having done nothing to deserve it (having, indeed, done the opposite), finds himself acclaimed as a hero of the Maderista rebellion in the state of Z a c a t e c a s . Irony accumulates as he realizes that the other local leaders of triumphant Maderismo are also yesterday's Porfiristas: the only genuine Revolutionary has died in battle. Andres Perez, maderista is a skillful evocation of the atmosphere of the sedate, self-satisfied Porfirian society w h i c h coped with M a d e r o ' s rebel lion by absorbing it. Los caciques w a s the next novel A z u e l a w r o t e , in 1914. It describes the effects of the R e v o l u t i o n , between its outbreak and early 1 9 1 4 , on the business c o m m u n i t y of a provincial t o w n , and the ruination of an honest and excessively naive small trader caught in the grips of the unscrupulous men w h o control the politics and e c o n o m y of the region. T h e pessimism of this depiction of the R e v o l u t i o n ' s failure to deal with injustice is attenuated in the final scene: as the anti-Huerta Revolutionaries o c c u p y the t o w n , the trader's orphaned children take their revenge by setting fire to the bosses' magnificent n e w warehouse. N e x t A z u e l a w r o t e the b o o k w h i c h w a s to exert such an influence on the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel. In late O c t o b e r 1914 he joined the guerrilla band of the Villista, Julian M e d i n a , and he w r o t e most of Los de abajo, a fictional r e w o r k i n g of these revolutionary experiences, while serving under M e d i n a as head of medical services. A z u e l a claimed to have written one battle scene as he witnessed the events on w h i c h he based it. H e completed the first version of the novel on g o i n g into exile in El Paso, T e x a s , in O c t o b e r 1 9 1 5 ; it w a s immediately published there in serial form, c o m i n g out as a b o o k in December, although the title-page is dated 1 9 1 6 . A z u e l a later made substantial revisions to his novel, the definitive version of w h i c h w a s first published in M e x i c o City in 1920. T h e stbry is simple. It concerns the formation, rise, and fall of the guerrilla band of Demetrio M a c i a s , in 1 9 1 4 and 1 9 1 5 . From its beginning as a handful of discontented friends, the band g r o w s fast, joining the mainstream of the anti-Huerta movement at the battle of Z a c a t e c a s , in w h i c h Demetrio plays a heroic part. H o w e v e r , then the decline sets in, until Demetrio and the few friends w h o stay w i t h him are ambushed and killed in the c a n y o n where they had enjoyed their first military success by ambushing and killing a small group of federal soldiers: 218 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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T h e rifle smoke lingers. Cicadas intone their imperturbable and mysterious chant; doves in crevices coo; cows graze peacefully. T h e sierra is dressed for a celebration; upon its inaccessible peaks a pure white mist descends, like snowy crepe on the head of a bride. And at the foot of a gaping cleft, as sumptuous as the porch of an ancient cathedral, Demetrio Macias, his eyes fixed for ever, continues to take aim with the barrel of his rifle. A z u e l a ' s choice of title w a s an inspired one. Los de abajo is a powerful and suggestive title, all the more so for being brief and seemingly simple. It tells the potential reader that this is not just a novel of the R e v o l u t i o n but also, w i t h its collective, lower-class, and therefore largely Indian pro tagonist, a revolutionary novel (there w a s , h o w e v e r , a precedent for such a title: Les Miser ables). T h e title also identifies a central contradiction of the R e v o l u t i o n , on w h i c h this novel focuses: fought by the indigenous peasantry and, in theory, for them, it benefited not them but the bourgeoisie, w h i c h it put in the place of the traditional aristocratic ruling classes. T h o s e underneath remained underneath after all their sacrifices and all the promises made to them. Los de abajo is a realist novel, but in several important w a y s it distances itself from nineteenth-century fictional practice. T h e r e has been much c o m m e n t on its fragmentary style and structure. In most earlier novels a continuous, flowing narrative provides, often in great detail, all the information w h i c h the readers are considered by the narrators to need in order to recreate the fictional w o r l d in their imagination. Y e t in L o s de abajo the narrator leaves many gaps w h i c h readers must fill for them selves. T h e r e are gaps in the description of setting, w h i c h is suggested w i t h light and impressionistic touches, often powerful, original, and lyrical, as in the last sentences of the novel. L o s de abajo avoids the heavy, cliched rhetoric w h i c h clogs much nineteenth-century fiction, preferring a lan guage the strength of w h i c h is its evocative brevity. T h e r e are gaps, t o o , in characterization, w h i c h emerges, often w i t h fine subtlety demanding close attention from the reader, in the course of dialogue and action rather than being given as descriptive labels, as Clive Griffin demonstrates in his A Critical Guide to Los de abajo. T h e r e are also gaps in the telling of the story, w h i c h jumps from one episode to another: w h a t lies between - not only the events but also the causal connections - is something the reader has to reconstruct. N o n e of the major events in the R e v o l u t i o n during the period of the novel's action - the battles of Z a c a t e c a s and of C e l a y a , the C o n v e n t i o n of Aguascalientes, and the A m e r i c a n occupation of V e r a c r u z - is narrated directly, the occupation is not even mentioned. In its fragmentary discourse, Los de abajo foreshadows the Latin A m e r i c a n novel of the 1960s and later. H o w e v e r , A z u e l a never takes fragmentation to the extremes of the later novelists. In his novel events are cc

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narrated in chronological order: he does not subvert but merely interrupts the traditional narrative sequence. Attentive readers can easily fill the gaps and m a k e sense of the narration, because the narrator is a l w a y s consider ate enough to provide sufficient information. In this sense, Los de abajo, despite its innovatory features, remains within the boundaries of Realism: it tells a coherent story about characters and events w h i c h the reader is encouraged to regard as having a real existence. It is also a traditional novel in that it has a clear unity: behind the fragmentation of the surface, there is a precise and symmetrical patterning, in the beginnings at Juchipila, the rise to the c l i m a x of success at Z a c a t e c a s , and the decline to the end at Juchipila. W h a t is more, the reader is invited to view the novel's action as a m i c r o c o s m representing the w h o l e R e v o l u t i o n w h e n , just before the final scene in the c a n y o n , Juchipila is identified as "the cradle of the R e v o l u t i o n of 1 9 1 0 " (Part m, Chapter 4 ) . T h e reader might also notice that the rise to a c l i m a x at Z a c a t e c a s , after w h i c h Demetrio's band declines into purposeless barbarity, reflects w h a t many people, including A z u e l a , have seen as the R e v o l u t i o n ' s development as a w h o l e . If the fragmentary narration suggests something about A z u e l a ' s v i e w of the haphazard, disorganized nature of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , the underly ing symmetry reflects his fatalistic belief in the futility of such attempts to improve the lot of the underdog. A n o t h e r innovative feature of L o s de abajo is its use of M e x i c a n , rather than standard peninsular Spanish as approved by the R o y a l A c a d e m y , not only in dialogue - the characters speak a range of lively and convincing varieties of colloquial M e x i c a n Spanish - but also in the narrator's o w n voice. A z u e l a w a s attacked by purists for the ignorant use of barbarisms, but of course this linguistic departure w a s a necessary feature of the general m o v e a w a y from the dependence on European models in search of a narrative w h i c h w o u l d be a more adequate expression of the M e x i c a n consciousness and of M e x i c a n realities. A further innovation is the portrayal of the relationship between N a t u r e and its h u m a n inhabitants. In the nineteenth-century fictional tradition the setting is a reflection or projection of themes, m o o d s , and personalities. H o w e v e r , in L o s de abajo the relationship is more often one of stark opposition, as in the novel's last sentences quoted a b o v e , between the beauty and peacefulness of N a t u r e and the brutality of men and w o m e n , for w h o m animal imagery is insistently used. T h i s extraordinary novel has its weaknesses. Some of the passages that A z u e l a interpolated during his revision for the 1920 edition are not very happily integrated w i t h the rest of the text. M o r e fundamentally, A z u e l a ' s efforts, as a liberal from a bourgeois b a c k g r o u n d , to transcend the race and class barriers that separate him from " l o s de a b a j o " are admirable but, perhaps inevitably, not altogether successful: it is n o t e w o r t h y that 220 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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this is A z u e l a ' s only novel about the revolutionary rank and file. T h e r e is middle-class condescension in such statements as "those w o r d s kept battering on their sluggish brains like hammers on an a n v i l " (Part in, Chapter i ) . T h e presentation of the revolutionary peasants' orgies of destruction invites the reader to c o n d e m n them from the v i e w p o i n t of a bourgeois morality, w i t h o u t any indication that this is a comprehensible expression of class hatred (we d o find such indication in the description of the destructive act at the end of L o s caciques - but this one expresses middle-class hatred of oppressors); or that the typewriters, b o o k s , and w o r k s of art they destroy cannot have any value for an illiterate peasantry; or that their failure to appreciate a culture from w h i c h they are excluded is not their fault. Furthermore, A z u e l a - w h o in other w a y s did so m u c h to free the Latin A m e r i c a n novel from nineteenth-century European tra ditions - w a s a man steeped in Positivism and Naturalism, and the sympathy he expresses for the suffering p o o r is opposed by the fatalistic pessimism fostered by these philosophical and literary movements. His preaching of this fatalism, w h i c h often takes the form of positivistic racialism, through characters inserted as authorial mouthpieces, is one of the less subtle features of L o s de abajo and many of his other novels. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that Los de abajo is a remarkable piece of w o r k , of great importance in the history of Latin A m e r i c a n literature. T h i s concentration on the merits and importance of one novel should not be taken to imply that it is the only one of A z u e l a ' s novels w o r t h reading. A l l his novels of the R e v o l u t i o n - he w r o t e three more - are fascinating. Las moscas portrays the job-hungry bureaucracy that followed Villa's forces. In at least one aspect, its lack of any plot, it is an even more experimental novel than L o s de abajo. Domitilo quiere set diputado is an accomplished satire of the civilian and military Carrancista leaders, w h o m A z u e l a ridicules w i t h grotesque dehumanizing caricature. Finally, Las tribulaciones de una familia decente portrays, not w i t h o u t sympathy, the reactions of an hacendado family to the loss of its wealth. O f the many novelists of the second w a v e , none has achieved anything like the enduring success of A z u e l a . T h e first novel of the second w a v e w a s by M a r t i n Luis G u z m a n ( 1 8 8 7 1976) - El dguila y la serpiente (1928, but serialized in a M e x i c o City newspaper t w o years earlier, translated as The Eagle and the Serpent, 1930). G u z m a n recounts memoirs of his life a m o n g revolutionary leaders in 1913 and 1 9 1 4 , m a k i n g no attempt to fictionalize his narration, w h i c h stands well apart both from A z u e l a ' s novels and from those of the later novelists.This is the w o r k of an urbane, cultured man, written in careful, studied, elegant Spanish. Descriptions are lengthy and minute, reflecting the attitudes of the detached aesthete caught up in the R e v o l u t i o n , w h o 221 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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insists on finding picturesqueness and even beauty there, and on m o v i n g a w a y from concrete reality into metaphysical speculations: In the military hospital of Culiacán I discovered that . . . there are, without doubt, serious bullets, conscientious bullets, those which kill with an accurate blow and wound with straightforward cruelty; but there are also imaginative, fanciful bullets, those which are no sooner on their way than they succumb to the universal longing to play, and make merry as they carry out their t a s k . . . Each separate casualty was a revelation of the existence of another category of bullet, of a personality alive in each missile at the very moment of delivering its blow. (Part I, Book 5, Chapter 7) T h e theme is elaborated at length. T h e reader might suspect that the R e v o l u t i o n w a s , for G u z m a n , some kind of theatrical performance, and his indifference in the face of suffering can repel; or m a y b e such aesthetic distancing w a s the only w a y for him to cope w i t h the horrors of w a r . T h e r e is little ethical content in El águila y la serpiente, except the occasional lament - frequent in A z u e l a and nearly all the novelists - that a revolution w h i c h started w i t h such high idealism in 1910 ended by merely replacing one corrupt system w i t h another. T h e fascination w h i c h the personality of Pancho Villa exerted over G u z m a n , revealed in many passages of El águila y la serpiente, led him to the over-ambitious project of a narration of Villa's life as he imagined Villa w o u l d have narrated it: Memorias de Pancho Villa (5 volumes, 1938, 939> 939> i94°> and 1964). T h e r e w a s only one significant w o m a n novelist of the R e v o l u t i o n , and she w a s also one of the most original and imaginative writers of this movement. Her w o r k s deserve more recognition than they have received. Cartucho (1931) by Nellie C a m p o b e l l o (b. 1909) is a series of brief scenes of the R e v o l u t i o n in the north, in Villista territory during the period of Villa's decline, as the narrator remembers having witnessed them as a child. Like A z u e l a , C a m p o b e l l o achieves expressiveness and freshness w i t h techniques of economic brevity, gap-leaving, fragmentation, sugges tion and evocation rather than detailed description, and the use of colloquial M e x i c a n language in both narration arid dialogue. H o w e v e r , she goes further than Azuela: the chronological sequence is not just interrupted but subverted, events being recorded in the order in w h i c h they are remembered, as a part of an exploration of the relationships between past witnessing and present narrating. M o r e o v e r , the gaps are much larger and harder to fill: the child witness can only register the weird things adults keep doing to each other, she cannot begin to account for them. T h e juxtaposition of innocence and horror is the strength of Cartucho: x

x

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W e saw some soldiers coming, holding up a tray; they walked by, talking and laughing. " H e y , what's that pretty stuff you've got there?" From where we were, above the street, we could see that in the basin there was something pink and quite pretty. They smiled, lowered the tray, and showed us what they were carrying. " G u t s , " said the youngest one, looking at us to see if we were frightened; when we heard they were guts we got closer and looked at them; they were all rolled up as if they had no end. " G u t s , how pretty!" (2, "Las tripas del general Sobarzo") T h e entrails are from the embalmed b o d y of an important general, on their w a y to the cemetery. Cartucho is an uneven w o r k ( C a m p o b e l l o w a s twenty-one w h e n she w r o t e it) but at its best, w i t h its fresh, cliche-free, direct language, it has considerable p o w e r . Las manos de mama (1937) pushes the experimen tation of Cartucho still further, but as the title indicates the focus shifts from the R e v o l u t i o n to the narrator's mother. In Campamento (1931), G r e g o r i o L o p e z y Fuentes (1897-1967) takes the idea of the collective protagonist to the extreme of not naming any of the characters: " T h e r e ' s no need at all for names, in the R e v o l u t i o n at least. It w o u l d be the same as trying to put names to the w a v e s in a river" (Part 1, Section 2). L o p e z y Fuentes also adopts the techniques of plotlessness and fragmentation in this montage of scenes during one night in a revolutionary c a m p - presented as a m i c r o c o s m of the R e v o l u t i o n and attempts to emulate A z u e l a ' s laconic style, but he does not possess A z u e l a ' s gift for choosing the telling detail: all t o o often he states the obvious and then repeats it. L i k e Los de abajo, Campamento contains much dialogue; but L o p e z y Fuentes, unlike A z u e l a , is no master of this art. His use, for the sake of documentary realism, o f a rigorously objective, external v i e w p o i n t (a narrative present tense is employed throughout) also creates problems w h i c h he fails to solve: characters' thoughts and feelings are conveyed w i t h the clumsy device of narrative speculation ("he must be thinking that. . . " ) , and moral messages are delivered through characters created solely for that purpose. Tierra (1932), by the same author, is one of the few fictional accounts of Z a p a t a ' s R e v o l u t i o n . It depicts each of the years 1 9 1 0 - 1 9 2 0 , using most of the techniques of Campamento, and sharing all its defects. T h e year 1931 also saw the publication of jVamonos con Pancho Villa! (1931), by Rafael F. M u f i o z (1899-1972), another novelist w h o follows A z u e l a ' s lead in such matters as episodic construction, economic style, lyrical Nature-description, and minimal characterization. L a c k i n g A z u e la's imaginative flair, h o w e v e r , he too often attempts to create interest by dwelling gratuitously on the gory and the macabre, something that A z u e l a never does. T h e r e is more interest in the same writer's Se llevaron el canon 223



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para Bachimba (1941), a depiction of O r o z c o ' s revolt against M a d e r o in 1 9 1 2 , as seen through the eyes of a boy caught up in it. Here sensationa lism is abandoned and the possibilities of the first-person narration are thoughtfully exploited. O n e of M e x i c o ' s best-known novelists of the earlier twentieth century, José R u b e n R o m e r o (1890—1952), w r o t e four novels of the Revolution: the memoirs Apuntes de un lugareho and Desbandada (1934), and the more fictional Mi caballo, mi perro y mi rifle (1936) and Rosenda (1946). His reputation does not rest on any of them, h o w e v e r . R o m e r o ' s real interest is the affectionate and witty description of peaceful provincial life: the R e y o l u t i o n is portrayed as a remote force w h i c h ultimately bursts in w i t h disastrous consequences. T h e first t w o volumes of the autobiography of the philosopher and politician José V a s c o n c e l o s (1882-1959) concern his activities in the Revolution: Ulises criollo, and La tormenta (1936). A l t h o u g h they have been praised as important novels of the R e v o l u t i o n , it may be that such praise has more to d o w i t h the powerful personality of their eminent author than the quality of his prose, w h i c h is fluent but careless and undistinguished. By the late 1930s so many novels of the R e v o l u t i o n had been written that the movement w a s s h o w i n g symptoms of decline from exhaustion and repetition. V a r i o u s writers made unsuccessful attempts to revive it by approaching the R e v o l u t i o n from new angles. Four of them can be mentioned. M a u r i c i o M a g d a l e n o (b. 1906) introduced Indigenismo [Indigenism] into the novel of the R e v o l u t i o n in El resplandor (1937) [Sunburst] (1944) and La Tierra Grande (1949). H o w e v e r , he o v e r l o o k e d A z u e l a ' s lesson about the virtues of subtle suggestive understatement: these protest novels lack p o w e r and conviction because they make their points in predictable, repetitive, clumsy w a y s . José M a n c i s i d o r (1894-1956) has been praised for writing the first and almost only socialist novels of the Revolution: as w e have seen, the political stance of most of the significant novelists w a s that of A z u e l a , idealistic Maderista liberalism lamenting the moral decline of the R e v o l u tion and failing to notice w h a t it did achieve. En la rosa de los vientos (1941) presents the R e v o l u t i o n in the north through the eyes of a reformed wastrel from V e r a c r u z ; Frontera junto al mar (1953) is a nationalistic narration of the United States' invasion of V e r a c r u z . T h e s e novels, full of noble souls preaching w o r t h y messages to each other, are not socialist w o r k s but clumsy, confused attempts to mislead readers into believing that the R e v o l u t i o n w a s socialist. General Francisco L. U r q u i z o (1891-1969) w a s the only serious novelist of the R e v o l u t i o n to present the federal soldier's viewpoint, in Tropa vieja 224 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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(1943). T h i s novel is a careful attempt to give a sympathetic and fair account of w h a t it w a s like to fight against the R e v o l u t i o n . H o w e v e r , Urquizo w a s another unskilled and unimaginative novelist, and his w o r k is an anthology of all the cliches of the movement. T h e curse of costumbrismo - the description in minute detail of all that w h i c h is typical or picturesque, w i t h o u t a thought for its artistic relevance - fell heavily upon U r q u i z o , as upon many of the less gifted novelists of the R e v o l u t i o n . T h e innovation of Francisco Rojas G o n z a l e z ( 1 9 0 1 - 1 9 5 1 ) in La negra Angustias (1944) w a s to make his protagonist a w o m a n , to give her a powerful, idiosyncratic personality, and to attempt to explore this personality in depth. T h i s psychological novel of the R e v o l u t i o n fails because the writing is laboured and the p s y c h o l o g y melodramatic and unconvincing: as a result of childhood experiences Angustias, the fear some leader of a band of Zapatista guerrillas, is both a hater and an imitator of men, but love for the most worthless of men turns her into a sweet, submissive, exploited but uncomplaining wife. T h e efforts of these late novelists of the R e v o l u t i o n confirm that the topic w a s exhausted as far as prose fiction w a s concerned. Indeed, the w h o l e of the second w a v e w a s a disappointing continuation, after A z u e l a ' s splendid start. T h e importance of the novel of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n cannot, h o w e v e r , be denied. It w a s a vital part of the discovery by M e x i c a n s of their corporate identity, of the concept of Mexicanidad. Indeed, through out Latin A m e r i c a the novels of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , particularly those of A z u e l a , s h o w e d writers h o w they could transform the European tradition, and develop w a y s of writing that were more adequate for the portrayal of A m e r i c a n experience.


[ 8 ]

The Spanish American novel from 1950 to 1975 Randolph D. Pope

A radical shift in the w a y in w h i c h history and literature were conceived, interpreted, and written produced a change in the self-perception of Spanish A m e r i c a n novelists between 1950 and 1 9 7 5 . T h e development of the cities, the c o m i n g of age of a large middle class, the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n , the Alliance for Progress, an increase in c o m m u n i c a t i o n between the countries of Latin A m e r i c a , the greater importance of the mass media, and a greater attention to Latin A m e r i c a from Europe and the United States, contributed to this change. T h e most important political events of the period were the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n in 1959 and the Chilean coup d'etat in 1973, but there were also others that affected writing, as they generated explanations, testimonies, or served as a troubling background: the fall of General Peron in Argentina, the protracted violent struggle of the urban guerrillas, brutally repressed in Argentina and Uruguay, and the unending violence in C o l o m b i a . T h e s e events are more than simply a framework in w h i c h to place the literary production of this period. M o s t of the novelists studied in this chapter believe there is a political and social discourse that only s h o w s its weakness w h e n exposed in the literary text. T h e i r novels are engaged in an intense dialogue not only w i t h other w o r k s of literature, but also with oral tradition, speech-writers, police reports, priests, and all defenders of blind o r t h o d o x y . A history of this period must start by stating that history itself became problematic since the new generations questioned the traditional version of history and sought to replace it w i t h their o w n , a more hesitant, shaded, and distrustful one than the clear-cut oppositions that prevailed before. Critics continued to publish important and useful studies in w h i c h writers were ranked by their date of birth, but novelists themselves were participating in a continental upheaval that affected equally younger and older writers, a crisis centered on the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n and that became k n o w n as the Boom. W h i l e only a few novelists became identified w i t h the Boom, as w e shall see in detail later, there are many other writers w h o 226 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel:

1950-1975

merit attention, occupied in the mapping of the rapidly changing national reality or in surrealist, existentialist, feminist, or other projects. In general - and considering there are many countries and hundreds of important authors - at the start of the period Realism prevails, w i t h novels tinged by an existentialist pessimism, w i t h well-rounded characters lamenting their destinies, and a straightforward narrative line. In the 1960s, language loosens up, gets hip, p o p , streetwise, characters are much more c o m p l e x , and the c h r o n o l o g y becomes intricate, m a k i n g of the reader an active participant in the deciphering of the text. Late in the period the political adventure goes sour, while the linguistic sophistication reaches a n e w height, and novelists turn more to a reflection on their o w n writing, a fiction on fiction or metafiction, while characters and story lines s h o w the corrosive p o w e r of a Postmodern society, where all is equally available and insignificant. M o r e and more there is a shared literary culture in Spanish A m e r i c a that does not depend on the simultaneous reading of European or N o r t h A m e r i c a n literature. It is safe to say that the major writers of this period are international writers, not only because many of them have been in exile or lived abroad, but because they are read w i t h equal interest in all Spanish-speaking countries. W h i l e any classification is open to criticism, it is useful to envision several categories, so that this critical description may serve the reader as a guide for further study. T h i s chapter s h o w s w h i c h writers published w o r k s that have merited continued critical attention, and explains briefly w h y they are important. I have preferred to take a few more lines in order to give a general idea about the w o r k s and the narrative strategies of the major writers, rather than to attempt vainly to mention all the active novelists of the period. In the first part of this chapter, I study the Boom and some novelists clearly identified w i t h this p h e n o m e n o n . T h e second part describes the w o r k of the more traditional narrators, running the g a m u t from t h r o w b a c k s to an early period to brilliant experimenters w h o still have an interest in conveying the illusion that they are reporting about the w o r l d . In the last section, I study the w o r k of a few representative authors w h o have produced extraordinary novels where language and its possibilities prevail. T h e s e categories simply stress aspects that coexist in all narrative: a concern for society and the referent of a novel on the one hand, and a creative surge that makes of language itself the referent, on the other. N a t i o n a l literatures should not be neglected, even if they cannot be properly handled in a single essay. It should not surprise anyone that most novels mentioned in this chapter were published in H a v a n a , M e x i c o City, Buenos Aires, or Santiago. T h o s e have been the sites of important publishing houses and strong centers of cultural innovation. Y e t in this 227 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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period many novels are published in Barcelona, reflecting the n e w interest of Spanish publishing houses in the Spanish A m e r i c a n market. Buenos Aires and M o n t e v i d e o had their o w n local stars, such as M u r e n a and M a l l e a , Bioy Casares or V i ñ a s , but some of their w o r k s d o not travel well; Santiago, in Chile, is presided by the criticism of A l o n e , while the older generation of Benjamín Subercaseaux, Eduardo Barrios, M a r t a Brunei, and M a n u e l R o j a s , is quietly superseded by José D o n o s o . O t h e r writers, such as Enrique Lafourcade, have a large national readership. C u b a is a lively cultural center, first w i t h the group of Orígenes, and then w i t h Lunes de Revolución, from Carpentier and L e z a m a to A r e n a s and Sarduy. In Central A m e r i c a , Asturias does not find a successor, while in C o l o m b i a the rural novels of C a b a l l e r o C a l d e r ó n are displaced by G a r c í a M á r q u e z , w h o is f o l l o w e d by A l v a r e z G a r d e a z á b a l . M e x i c o continues a tradition of strong regional writers and diverse schools of writing, from Y á ñ e z to Sainz, w i t h novelists such as Luis Spota or Sergio Fernández, the first a popular, the other a refined, writer, both better-known in M e x i c o than abroad. I will not be able to account here for these intricate developments and in a few cases I have excluded a writer w h o is essential in the local scene, but less significant in the Spanish A m e r i c a n p a n o r a m a . Y e t , the internationally k n o w n authors w i t h w h o m I am mainly concerned in this chapter are buttressed by a plethora of names of national reputation and sustained by readers w h o easily juxtapose in their libraries b o o k s of Sartre, Buzzati, M a r x , Faulkner, and Koestler, with those of Fuentes, A r g u e d a s , C o r t á z a r , Bullrich, A l b a l u c i a A n g e l , and G a r c í a M á r q u e z . In brief, the history of the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel from 1950 to 1975 saw a change in the standing of the native writers, w h o w e n t from marginal and tolerated - the center having been earlier Paris and N e w Y o r k - to central and celebrated. Simultaneously there w a s a shift from the novel as history to history as a novel, from the p o w e r of facts to the preeminence of the w o r d . T h e greater attention paid to Spanish A m e r i c a n novelists and their international success in the 1960s, a p h e n o m e n o n that w a s called the Boom, affected all writers and readers w h o lived through this important event. A number of gifted novelists, several international editors in search of a n e w product, and a g r o w i n g market were important, but w h a t brought writers together and focused the attention of the w o r l d on Spanish A m e r i c a w a s the triumph of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n in 1959, w h i c h promised a n e w age. T h e period of euphoria can be considered closed w h e n in 1 9 7 1 the C u b a n government hardened its party line and the poet Heberto Padilla w a s forced to reject in a public document his so-called decadent and deviant views. T h e furor over Padilla's case brought to an 228


The Spanish American novel: 1950-19-75 end the affinity between Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals and the C u b a n inspirational myth. W h o is and w h o is not to be included in the Boom has been widely debated and never settled. T w o b o o k s , José D o n o s o ' s Historia personal del "boom" [The Boom in Spanish American Literature], and Emir R o d r í g u e z M o n e g a l ' s El boom de la novela latinoamericana are the best guides in this debate. O n the other hand, a few writers exerted w i d e and undisputed influence. W h i l e the names of many other writers may be added to the list, the f o l l o w i n g may not be omitted: V a r g a s L l o s a , R u l f o , Fuentes, C o r t á z a r , and G a r c í a M á r q u e z . V a r g a s L l o s a ' s first novel w o n the Seix Barral prize in Barcelona in 1962, opening the doors of Europe to Spanish A m e r i c a n narrators. European success meant continental visibility and enormous prestige in Spanish A m e r i c a . R u l f o , the author of t w o b o o k s , only one of them a novel, w a s the a c k n o w l e d g e d master incorporated a posteriori, a writer w h o balances social concern, verbal experimentation, and a unique style. Fuentes not only w r o t e some of the most important novels of the period, but w a s also an indefatigable and brilliant publicist of Spanish A m e r i c a . C o r t á z a r in one novel brought together Paris and Buenos Aires, p o k i n g fun at tradition and opening many n e w paths. G a r c í a M á r q u e z w r o t e the best seller and the masterpiece of the period. T h e s e authors enjoyed immediate popular and critical acclaim. T h e y adopted the avant-garde strategy of proclaiming a n e w beginning and declaring most of the traditional masters obsolete. C a r l o s Fuentes in his influential study La nueva novela hispanoamericana, argued convincingly that the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel had been devoured by the jungle, the mountains, the rivers, in short, by a descriptive passion for Spanish A m e r i c a n nature. F r o m our vantage point, w h a t w a s p r o m o t e d in the 1960s in Spanish A m e r i c a as a distinct m o v e a w a y from tradition can be traced back to the experimentation of the avant-garde movements in the early part of the century. M a c e d o n i o Fernández (Argentina, 1874—1952), for e x a m p l e , anticipated many ideas of the Boom, as can be seen in his posthumously published Museo de la novela de la Eterna. T h e story of the Boom could start chronologically w i t h M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias's El Señor Presidente (published in 1946, but started in 1922) [El Señor Presidente] and proceed to recent years relying on the ordered succession of publication dates of the novels that have been mentioned in relation to the Boom. Other starting points could be Sábato's El túnel (1948) or Onetti's El pozo (1939). O r one can g o even farther b a c k , to the vanguardist movements of the 1920s. H o w e v e r , the writers of the Boom declared themselves orphaned and w i t h o u t any autochthonous model, caught between their admiration for Proust, Joyce, M a n n , Sartre, and 229


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other European writers and their need to have a Spanish A m e r i c a n voice, even if they rejected the most respected Spanish A m e r i c a n writers, Indigenistas, Criollistas, and Mundonovistas. D o n o s o explains in his Historia personal that the lack o f literary fathers enriched his generation and gave it a great deal o f freedom. O b v i o u s l y , this is not altogether true and its c o m p l e x and healthy blocking o f the father's influence becomes transparent w h e n in a footnote D o n o s o explains that he has titled his b o o k Historia personal after the Chilean critic A l o n e ' s Historia personal de la literatura chilena (1954). A l o n e , the p s e u d o n y m for Joaquín D i a z Arrieta, had been born in 1 8 9 1 , thirty-three years before D o n o s o . T h i s illusion o f freedom a l l o w e d , nevertheless, for a n e w start, a n e w game. In the early 1950s, many critics considered as great Spanish A m e r i c a n novels C i r o A l e g r í a ' s El mundo es ancho y ajeno, Eduardo Barrios's Gran Señor y rajadiablos, and A g u s t í n Y á ñ e z ' s Al filo del agua (all published in the 1940s). Alegría w r o t e about the exploitation o f the Inca Indians in Peru, Barrios w a s concerned w i t h the Chilean countryside and mysticism, and Y á ñ e z w r o t e about a time before the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n . T h e s e three novels have a language that is elegant, correct, literary. T h e narrative progresses by g o i n g from first to last, there is a clear understanding o f g o o d and bad, and the reader is taken for a tour, carefully guided and pampered. T h e s e texts are still echoes of the traditional Spanish A m e r i c a n novel, descriptive o f the struggle against N a t u r e , militantly concerned with social justice, and lovingly regional. T h e triumph o f the C u b a n guerrillas in January o f 1959 over Batista's dictatorship w a s seen as an affirmation o f Spanish A m e r i c a n independence. T h e participation o f the Argentinian Ernesto C h e G u e v a r a in the insurrectionary movements in C u b a and Bolivia became a s y m b o l o f internationalism, while the establishment o f a cultural center in i960, the C a s a de las A m e r i c a s , w i t h its yearly a w a r d s and aggressive marketing of the R e v o l u t i o n a m o n g Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals, created a shared sense o f purpose. T h i s continental cohesion w a s validated w h e n V a r g a s Llosa received the Biblioteca Breve prize o f Seix Barrai in Barcelona in 1962 for La ciudad y los perros [Time of the Hero], A l t h o u g h this novel told a story about a military academy in L i m a , and although it w a s reminiscent o f M u s i l ' s Young Tòrless (so it could have been read as Peruvian or European), it returned from Europe to the readers in B o g o t á , M e x i c o City, and Buenos Aires as a Spanish A m e r i c a n novel. O n l y Spain had enough publishing p o w e r combined w i t h adequate distribution of her b o o k s to m a k e a novel simultaneously visible in most Spanish-speaking countries. H e r o w n literature w a s at the end o f a dry period o f social realism and readers turned avidly to the c o m p l e x and daredevil technique and the exotic v o c a b u l a r y of V a r g a s Llosa's novel. O n e of the jurors of the Seix Barrai prize, the Spanish poet José M a r í a Valverde, w a s asked to 230 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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write a prologue to prepare readers for the brutal scenes, the criticism of the army, and the off-color language. H a d the action of La ciudad y los perros taken place in M a d r i d , Spanish censorship w o u l d not have a l l o w e d its publication. T h e detachable y e l l o w pages w i t h V a l v e r d e ' s prologue and a p h o t o g r a p h of L i m a ' s L e o n c i o Prado Military A c a d e m y soon became unnecessary w h e n V a r g a s Llosa w a s heralded as a masterful innovator w h i c h s h o w e d , in contrast, the sorry state of the novel in Spain. Valverde w r o t e that La ciudad y los perros w a s the best novel in the Spanish language since the Argentinian R i c a r d o Giiiraldes's Don Segundo Sombra, a novel published in 1926. T h e brushing aside of over thirty years of novels in the Spanish-speaking w o r l d is not completely unjustified. W h i l e poets such as Vallejo, N e r u d a , H u i d o b r o , and Paz had reached international fame and were thoroughly modern and creative in their technique, the novel f o l l o w e d the tired models of the past w i t h o u t much genius. M o s t readers n o w lived in the large cities, M e x i c o City, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and were not primarily concerned about nature, Indians, small t o w n s , nor did they find their o w n language reflected in the superbly polished prose of Barrios, C i r o Alegria, or Eduardo M a l l e a . La ciudad y los perros, on the contrary, is about the city, prominently displayed in its title, and it presented a challenge to the immense and sophisticated intellectual middle class that had developed in the first part of the century. Spanish A m e r i c a w a s also mobilized by John F. K e n n e d y ' s election as president of the United States in N o v e m b e r of i960 and the subsequent creation of the Alliance for Progress. T h e continent had suddenly entered contemporary history and one of the first b o o k s to notice the plethora of excellent writers w a s a collection of interviews, published in 1967, by Luis Harss and Barbara D o h m a n n , appropriately called Into the Mainstream: Conversations with Latin-American Writers. Here Carpentier, Asturias (who w o n the N o b e l Prize in 1967), Borges, G u i m a r a e s R o s a , Onetti, C o r t a z a r , R u l f o , Fuentes, G a r c i a M a r q u e z , and V a r g a s Llosa shared the limelight. H o w w a s the technique of the major novelists of the Boom different from that of their predecessors? It relied on a Cubist superposition of different points of v i e w , it made time and lineal progress questionable, and it w a s technically c o m p l e x . Linguistically self-assured, it used the vernacular w i t h o u t apologies. Fuentes's La muerte de Artemio Cruz [The Death of Artemio Cruz] requires that the reader spend some time adjusting to the mechanism of the storytelling. T i m e in Artemio Cruz flows b a c k w a r d s into the origin of everything, m a k i n g a statement for the intelligent reader w h o can follow its tightrope prowess: surely not the happy celebration of life of a Classic period, but the exasperation of a refined society that w a s sold d o w n the river in the first second in Paradise. In C o r t a z a r ' s Rayuela, the instructions for reading, the intellectual 231 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

discussions, the defiance of a stable structure, the search for an active reader lead to a homeless and rootless scattering. T h e s e novelists, their readers, and their critics started to rewrite the literary tradition, and a n e w genealogical A B C developed: M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias (who repeatedly attacked the Boom but revalued indigenous Latin A m e r i c a n myths w i t h c o m p l e x vanguardist prose), Jorge Luis Borges (who never w r o t e a novel yet became the p a r a g o n of a new cosmopolitan writing), and Alejo Carpentier (whose texts are baroque in syntax and language, but flawlessly classical in their structure). Rulfo w a s incorporated a posteriori for his Pedro Páramo, L e z a m a L i m a much later, w h e n the p o w e r of his Paradiso began to be perceived and celebrated. Other writers joined the b a n d w a g o n : C a b r e r a Infante w i t h Tres tristes tigres [Three Trapped Tigers], and José D o n o s o w i t h El obsceno pájaro de la noche [The Obscene Bird of Night], and M a n u e l Puig, and Severo Sarduy. Originally, the vanguardist movements, strictly defined, used innovative techniques that were tightly b o u n d to a political message: anti-elitist, progressive, anarchic. In the novels of the 1960s this ideological grounding, lost by then in Europe and N o r t h A m e r i c a , reappears. T h e interrelation of all time, the questioning of one m o m e n t by another, the belief in history and reality, the conviction that it is possible to write new literature and that this will have a purifying effect on society, the flights of fantasy, the search for a new language are related to a yearning for an apocalyptic razing of the past to get a new and fresh start. T h e Boom w a s the culmination of several decades, yet the historical time, the rhetoric of the period, and the talent of its protagonists made it a new beginning of sorts. I will study here five major authors in the order of publication of their most important novels: Rulfo (Pedro Páramo, 1955), Fuentes (La muerte de Artemio Cruz, 1962), C o r t á z a r (Rajuela, 1963 [Hopscotch]), V a r g a s Llosa (La ciudad y los perros, 1963), and G a r c í a M á r q u e z (Cien años de soledad, 1967 [One Hundred Years of Solitude]). In the case of C o r t á z a r and V a r g a s Llosa I follow the alphabetical order. Juan Rulfo (1918-1986) published only one brief novel, yet it is probably the single most important and influential of this period, Pedro Páramo [Pedro Páramo], T h e setting is rural M e x i c o , and the action is familiar: the fast rise to p o w e r by the ruthless caudillo, w h o flaunts the law and manipulates the R e v o l u t i o n , stopping at nothing to take over the land and enjoy all the w o m e n he desires. O n e w o m a n - the one he loves resists him, w i t h d r a w n into madness and death. Y e t the narration takes a fresh angle, f o l l o w i n g Pedro P a r a m o ' s son, Juan Preciado, as he descends into the sun-scorched valley in search of his dead father. H e meets his o w n death amid the rumor of the voices of the dead, never tired of rehearsing their complaint for the suffering brought upon them during their life by love, pride, and p o w e r , w i t h the bitter m e m o r y persisting beyond the 232 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950-19J5 grave. Rulfo builds the story as an enigmatic puzzle, w i t h short fragments of the story following each other in a sequence that does not correspond to their c h r o n o l o g y . T h e language is bare-boned, deceptively simple, reject ing completely the ornate descriptions and adjective-laden sentences of the novels of the first part of the century. Pedro Paramo can be read as a Greek tragedy, w i t h the voices of the dead as the choir of the people. T h e r e are, as well, many references to a deeper level of myth related to a descent to Hell — like Ulysses, A e n e a s , Christ, or Dante - and a return to Paradise and prelapsarian innocence. Y e t this is not an intellectual novel or a thesis novel: its p o w e r stems from the fact that it is more seen and heard than read, as a telling vision and a mesmerizing whisper of ancestral darkness. C a r l o s Fuentes (b. 1928) brought n e w daring to the M e x i c a n novel, stagnated in rural topics and traditional social realism. W i t h La region mas transparente [Where the Air is Clear], a b r a v a d o performance with a multitudinous cast of characters and an immensely rich language bursting the seams of an intricate story line, Fuentes offered the n e w urban readers a disquieting but recognizable mirror of life in the new Spanish A m e r i c a n metropolis. Concerned w i t h history as were his predecessors Y a n e z or A z u e l a , Fuentes introduces not only a more disillusioned v i e w of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n and its aftermath, and a deeper relation w i t h preHispanic M e x i c o and w i t h European and N o r t h A m e r i c a n culture, but also a radically n e w concept of history, made of options and choices that create simultaneous modes of existence. T h e brilliant fabric of Fuentes's first novel is w o v e n from a myriad of interrelated stories that reflect the variegated forms that life takes in M e x i c o City. In the M e x i c a n capital many different spaces, times, and cultures coexist, often in a blind and violent search for p o w e r that demands the eradication of any single alternative. Simple binary opposition, innocent belief in progress, exclu sive values, all are shaken by the topsy-turvy of the c r o w d e d city e v o k e d by Fuentes, a nightmarish and more c o m p l e x version of John D o s Passos's Manhattan Transfer. Fuentes revels in the creative originality of spoken language - including expressions of other Spanish A m e r i c a n countries leaving aside the excuses, the italics, the glossaries, the neat delimitation between educated narrator and characters, and in the trepidation of incurring the displeasure of the Spanish R o y a l A c a d e m y of L a n g u a g e w h i c h had handicapped previous narrators. H e heard M e x i c o speaking, and the public liked it, unleashing powerful n e w creative energies. La region mas transparente chronicles the rise of a corrupt and uninspiring middle- and upper-class, devoted to business and progress, as it faces the resistance of an ancestral M e x i c o , where magic, cyclical time, and h u m a n sacrifice still exist. T h e eighty-five named characters, in a list added to the 1972 edition, are classified into several groups: families, bourgeois, hangers-on, foreigners, and intellectuals, plus the people, the 233 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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revolutionaries, and the guardians. T h e Dantesque description of the city and its many circles o w e s much to essayists such as A l f o n s o Reyes, Salvador N o v o , and O c t a v i o Paz, but is much more than an a m a l g a m of a great store of information. Fuentes s h o w s a curiosity and a searching mind that delight in amassing information, w o r d s , languages, names, puns, in a Joycean swell of untiring celebration of existence. His deep critical insight, his k n o w l e d g e a b l e and cosmopolitan view, his u n c o m promising search for a social and private truth comes from a dissatisfac tion that prevents completion, that leaves behind long texts as traces of a frustrated wish to translate all reality into writing. T h e recounting of the three-year period from 1951 to 1954, that, in the novel, separates the first and last appearances of Ixca Cienfuegos, w h o acts as the Vergil of this labyrinth, s h o w s that M e x i c o is not a stable or transparent society but, on the contrary, is fragmented, unreconciled w i t h ancestral w o u n d s and plunging blindly ahead into change. Las buenas conciencias [The Good Conscience] is a more traditional narration about an adolescent c o m i n g to terms w i t h the limits imposed on him as a condition of inheriting his family's wealth and the blessing of his social class. T h e slow description of the rise of the family s h o w s the keen eye for the genealogy of economic and social p o w e r that is associated w i t h Balzac in France or Perez G a l d o s in Spain. T h e focus of the novel then centers on the temptations - both social and mystical - of solidarity that w o u l d swerve the youngster from pragmatic adaptation to idealistic rebellion. A similar choice - between passivity and action, between loyalty to the principles of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n and expedient adaptation to profitable circumstances that call for audacity and the shelving of ideals torments an aged and dying magnate in Fuentes's best-known novel La muerte de Artemio Cruz. T h e extremely c o m p l e x structure is a model of purposeful virtuosity that does not upstage the e v o k e d characters and historical period nor turns its back on the reader; on the contrary, the different narrators in first, second, and third person, the segments narrated in past, present, and future tense, the numerous flash-backs, offer a kaleidoscopic view of A r t e m i o C r u z ' s life and circumstances, characterizing him as villain and hero, as victimizer and victim. A g a i n here, as in La region mas transparente, many pages read as an inspired transcription of a c r o w d e d city, as a n e t w o r k of a language w h o s e referents were in continuous and chaotic motion. A m o n g this rich verbal debris, readers can guess at the tragedy of human beings surviving an implacable society. T h e novel w o u l d not have become an instant classic w i t h o u t the vitality it brilliantly celebrates, from A r t e m i o C r u z himself refusing to die, recording his voice, searching in his m e m o r y for the decisions that a l l o w e d him to survive, m a k i n g love w i t h Regina, plunging 234 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950—1975 into battle - to the lyrical and incantatory enumerations of colloquial expressions. M o s t critics w o u l d probably agree that, with Borges's short stories, C o r t á z a r ' s Rayuela, G a r c í a M á r q u e z ' s Cien años de soledad, and Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, Fuentes's La muerte de Artemio Cruz transformed Spanish A m e r i c a n literature in a radical and permanent w a y . Aura [Aura] is a novella where the intelligence, erudition, and masterful craft of Fuentes are powerfully distilled to produce a meditation on writing, magic, and history. Zona sagrada [Holy Place] analyzes the relation between a y o u n g man called M i t o (the Spanish w o r d for M y t h ) , and his famous actress mother. Fuentes calls to service here G r e c o - R o m a n and A z t e c m y t h o l o g y , with a generous serving of Freudian terms and a constellation of emblems of the contemporary myths of the marketplace. Cambio de piel [A Change of Skin] follows t w o couples on a trip to C h o l u l a , w h e r e they are stranded in the sacred city and w h e r e they must face the phantoms of their past. T h a t one of the characters w a s an architect responsible for building some extermination centers of the H o l o c a u s t , and another is an A m e r i c a n w o m a n , widens the geographical and chronological scope of the novel. T h e romantic entanglement of the four main characters and the ritual death of one of them in one of C h o l u l a ' s pyramids are predictable, yet the novel conceals an intriguing " c h a n g e of s k i n " or shift in the narration of the later chapters. Cumpleaños is an enigmatic text, rich in references to theology and art, that describes the baffling experiences of a recluse in a sprawling and isolated mansion that seems to e x p a n d at will in space and time. A similar brooding and introspective tone is found in Fuentes's monumental Terra nostra [Terra Nostra], a triptych c o m p o s e d of three interrelated novelistic spaces: an apocalyptic Paris on the verge of the year 2000, the Spain of Philip II and El Escorial, and the N e w W o r l d , especially the conquest of M e x i c o . Fuentes's learning shines in the many layers of this postmodern historical novel, where history itself is seen as mystification and at best an a p p r o x i m a t i o n to a convincing fictive reconstruction of the past. T h e novel depicts painstakingly the somber atmosphere of the Emperor's monastic palace and playfully provides new versions of glorified moments of Spanish history. Fuentes does a w a y altogether w i t h Charles V probably t o o sane and vigorous to inhabit Terra Nostra - and makes of Celestina, Cervantes, and D o n Q u i x o t e intriguing new characters. Julio C o r t á z a r (1914-1984) distinguished himself first w i t h several b o o k s of stunning short stories where the limits of conventional reality were u n a c k n o w l e d g e d and transgressed with playful freedom. His first published novel, Los premios [The Winners], tells the story of a group of prizewinners sailing out to sea w i t h o u t k n o w i n g their destination and irritated by being excluded from an area in the ship. T h e setting and action are t o o allegorical and recognizable as Kafkaesque or French Existential2-35 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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ism, even if some lyrical m o n o l o g u e s s h o w C o r t a z a r ' s trademark of refusing to accept authority and his search - in vain - for a pattern that w o u l d explain everything in the old metaphysical tradition. In Rayuela [Hopscotch], one of the most famous novels of the Spanish A m e r i c a n Boom, the uneasiness of the main character, H o r a c i o , is reflected at every level of this decentered and mercurial novel. Readers are invited to read the text as a traditional novel, divided into t w o parts and an appendix, or to follow a c o m p l e x order suggested by the author, an order that has readers jumping back and forth and leads them into a trap. T h e first part follows H o r a c i o as he searches in Paris for a meaning in his life, a rambling existence shared w i t h a w o m a n , M a g a , w h o is in contact with her feelings and can be spontaneous, and an international coterie of intellectual friends. In the second part of Rayuela, H o r a c i o returns to Buenos Aires, only to find himself there equally distant from a meaningful life, a life that he sees and envies in his friends Traveler and T a l i t a . T h e anxiety of Existentialism, the p a r a d o x of Z e n , the apparent freedom of jazz, the iconoclastic fervor of V a n g u a r d i s m , and plenty of legitimate humor, happy turns of phrase, and genuine insight drive the novel forth at a dizzying speed. T h e third part of the novel contains fragments, w h o l e chapters, quotations, as though the neat structure that precedes it had burst its seams from an excess of ideas and a richness of language and imagination that refused to be contained. Some sections of the novel, R o c a m a d o u r ' s death, the piano concert of M a d a m e T r e p a t , T a l i t a suspended on a makeshift bridge high a b o v e the street are masterpieces of narrative. Rayuela's celebration of ordinary language, scorn for pedantry, academicism, and literary posturing, and C o r t a z a r ' s insistence on the active role that readers should play in reading novels were all lessons that had immediate and deep influence in Spanish A m e r i c a . 62 Modelo para armar [62: A Model Kit] is a hermetic novel that develops out of C h a p t e r 62 in Rayuela, where an author proposed a novel in w h i c h psychological coherence in characters w o u l d not exist. 62 Modelo para armar never reveals the secret of dolls that horrify their o w n e r s , even if there are intimations that a vampire may be at large, nor does the map on the cover help much in f o l l o w i n g the displacements of the characters in Europe. T h e text, therefore, will a l w a y s hold a tantalizing possibility for interpretation by the active reader, confronted by a literary puzzle with several pieces missing. Libro de Manuel [A Manual for Manuel], addresses a major problem of a period in w h i c h armed insurrection w a s generalized in Spanish A m e r i c a . T h e intellectual, in this case A n d r e s , is confronted with the choice of joining the violence - receding into barbarism - or upholding a peaceful resistance that can be seen as complicity with an extremely violent establishment. T h e scrapbook of documents that Andres and his friends 236 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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are putting together for little M a n u e l - the next generation - tips the balance in favor of hesitant action. Libro de Manuel makes a case for simultaneous revolutions, external, m a y b e armed, and internal, directed against sexual and cultural prejudices. T h e same lack of determination of A n d r e s is found in the genre of the novel, that appears occasionally more like an essay or an autobiography than a traditional novel, and ends pinned d o w n to the time of its writing by all the documents inserted in the text, more an important generational testimony than a w o r k of fiction. M a r i o V a r g a s Llosa (Peru, b . 1936) can tell a story and create a w o r l d w i t h the apparent ease of a nineteenth-century master. H e holds the attention of the reader and fires the imagination as Balzac, D u m a s , or V i c t o r H u g o did in their time. In addition, while the story line is riveting and the characters are clearly visualized with convincing depth, V a r g a s Llosa gives considerable attention to style, his model being Flaubert, and has an unsurpassed grasp of technical virtuosity - learnt from Faulkner, D o s Passos, H e m i n g w a y , and other sources, including romances of chivalry - splicing and mixing time, superposing different spaces, and withholding crucial information until the climactic final revelation. His first novel, La ciudad y los perros [Time of the Hero] opened the d o o r of the Spanish market to the Spanish A m e r i c a n Boom. T h e novel describes life in a military school in L i m a , depicting the violence, corruption, and the perverse glorification of supposedly manly virtues c o n d o n e d by the institution. A series of interior m o n o l o g u e s , w i t h recurrent but at first unidentified speakers, and fast-paced action tell a double story of crime and love, of school and city. Stolen e x a m questions lead to a murder that must be hushed to save the honor of the institution. T h e cadets learn in the process h o w to tune d o w n their expectations of themselves and the w o r l d . T h r e e of them are romantically involved w i t h the same w o m a n , in an improbable but highly effective w a y of s h o w i n g class and personality differences. La casa verde [The Green House] confirmed V a r g a s L l o s a ' s genius by complicating the action further and magnifying the narrative space w i t h ever-increasing virtuosity. A sequence of story lines brings back w i t h a symphonic effect the tales of t w o cities and several characters: a city in the jungle, Santa M a r i a de N i e v a in the A m a z o n , and one in the coastal, dry region, Piura. In the jungle, y o u n g Indian girls are rounded up to be educated by nuns, becoming despoiled of their o w n tradition and fit only to be maids or prostitutes. T h e Indians are also being exploited as collectors of rubber sap, and their attempt to bypass the white middleman is ruthlessly repressed w i t h the help of the army. Readers learn part of this story by eavesdropping on the dialogue of a mythical organizer of the jungle criminal trade and his assistant as they float d o w n the river in a canoe, the old kingpin n o w powerless and sick. In the coastal t o w n , a man 237 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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LITERATURE

of u n k n o w n origin sets up a brothel, the Green H o u s e , o v e r c o m i n g the resistance of the priest. A soldier w h o serves in the t w o cities, and his wife - educated by the nuns at Santa M a r í a de N i e v a and later a prostitute in the Green H o u s e - provide the link between these t w o stories w h i c h paint a grim picture of the church and the army, the supposedly civilizing forces. A masterly use of dialogues switches the story effortlessly from one time and space to a different one. T h i s practice of nesting past dialogues in present conversations is also brilliantly used in Conversación en La Catedral [Conversation in The Cathedral], where the central action is a four-hour conversation at a seedy bar called " L a C a t e d r a l , " between a frustrated journalist, Santiago Z a v a l a , and A m b r o s i o , the former chauffeur and lover of Santiago's father Fermín. A proliferation of memories and the help of a third-person narrator reconstruct the life of the three men, plus a fourth, C a y o Bermúdez, the strong man of the O d r i a dictatorship (1948-1956). Fermín Z a v a l a represents the white upper class that expects to profit from an alliance with the regime, and he does get preferential treatment for his business, but at the price of a degrading complicity. H e is further driven into the underworld by his h o m o s e x u a l practices, considered perverse and despicable in the machista w o r l d where he lives. C a y o Bermúdez presides over a prostituted society that he baits w i t h money, sex, and p o w e r . A m b r o s i o is a g o o d man, exploited, perhaps driven into crime by friendship, and failed as an entrepreneur. Santiago has rebelled against his social class, studying in the proletarian university, flirting w i t h c o m m u n ist thought, rejecting his family, but finds himself leading a mediocre life w i t h o u t any future. T h e conclusion is bitter, since the four men exemplify the complete bankruptcy of Peruvian society, but the novel, in its vast cast of characters and different scenarios, uncovers a rich and varied country. T h e interlocking dialogues are more than an entertaining device, since they s h o w that everyone lives in a continued and necessary relation w i t h others and it is only from an understanding of the social environment that the self can be adequately described. After the long and somber Conversation, V a r g a s Llosa published a shorter, h u m o r o u s novel, Pantaleón y las visitadoras [Captain Pantoja and the Special Service], about a captain in charge of supplying a sexualrelief service to soldiers stationed far from major cities. Pantaleón c o m m a n d s a squadron of prostitutes that criss-crosses the country w i t h military efficiency and admirable logistics. W i t t y dialogue and a scrapb o o k of different documents reduces to a minimum the presence of a traditional narrator in this story of military zeal pushed to madness. A s a parable of the insanity of blindly obeying orders and of the frenzied efficiency of contemporary organizations, Pantaleón delivers more than 238



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its entertaining story, by itself an unusual and w e l c o m e addition to the generally earnest literature of these decades. T h e best-known Spanish A m e r i c a n novelist of the Boom is the C o l o m bian Gabriel G a r c i a M a r q u e z (b. 1927), w h o received the N o b e l Prize in 1982. His training as a journalist and screenwriter honed his prodigious ability to tell a story w i t h unequalled skill, w i t h an apparent simplicity and transparency that hide the originality and creativity of his language. His first novel, La hojarasca {Leafstorm), introduces an imaginary t o w n , M a c o n d o , based partly on the reality of C o l o m b i a n t o w n s divided by decades of a brutal civil w a r , and partly on regions invented by the literary mind, such as Faulkner's Y o k n a p a t a w p h a country, G r a h a m Greene's tropic, or K a f k a ' s dispassionately reported a n o m a l o u s w o r l d . La hojar asca presents the conflict between one man, bound by his promise to bury a dead doctor, and the t o w n , w h i c h has v o w e d not to bury him as a revenge for the doctor's refusal to take care of the w o u n d e d during an episode of the civil w a r . W h i l e there are many intertextual references to Sophocles' Antigonewhere A n t i g o n e defies her uncle C r e o n ' s orders not to bury her brother Polynices - the novel is deeply rooted in C o l o m b i a n history. T h e leafstorm is a reference to the swirl created by the banana companies w h o changed the social fabric of small t o w n s , accelerating history, magnifying space, and multiplying houses, production, and people w i t h a speed disconcerting to the original settlers. T h e story is told through three voices, an old colonel, his daughter Isabel, and his grandson. T h e m o n o l o g u e s are stilted and undifferentiated, more a report explaining the antecedents of the conflict than true flow of conscience. H o w e v e r , there are in this early w o r k unforgettable images: the boy catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror, the doctor requesting grass to eat for supper, the vapid g r o o m , the defiant maid w h o turns out in her Sunday best for mass, the extravagant priest w h o preaches from a farmer's almanac. M a n y enigmas are left unresolved: w h o did the colonel's wife believe the doctor w a s w h e n he arrived in 1903? W a s the doctor protecting someone else w h e n he declared himself the father of the maid's child? W h a t w o u l d happen once the funeral procession g o t into the open in 1928 ? W h a t w a s the relationship between the doctor and the priest? T h e reader is left w i t h a burning image of muffled intensity, repressed feelings, and deep, defiant isolation. El coronel no tiene quien le escriba [No One Writes to the Colonel] is a novella about a retired colonel w h o has been awaiting his pension for fifty-six years. For fifteen years he goes every Friday to the post office expecting a letter from a distant governmental bureaucracy, a l w a y s in vain. A t the start of the narration, on a rainy O c t o b e r day, the colonel is reduced to poverty since he and his wife have eaten up all their savings and 239



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sold their possessions. T h e i r son has been murdered nine months before, but he left behind his g a m e c o c k that comes to symbolize the resistance against a corrupt and violent establishment. W h i l e the colonel is tempted by hunger and destitution to sell the g a m e c o c k to a rich friend, he ultimately assumes his position as a leader of a new resistance and courageously faces the future. H e is given n e w life by inheriting his son's mission, the nine months since his son's death transmuted into the successful gestation of the hero. T h e brilliance of this text stands out w h e n it is contrasted w i t h the many novels of social protest written in Spanish A m e r i c a during the same period, w h i c h were heavy-handed, w i t h a profuse rhetoric. El coronel no tiene quien le escriba is lean and stark, implying all the violence and terror of an unresponsive and destructive society by telling w i t h o u t excessive sentiment and w i t h dry h u m o r an unpretentious story that is transmuted into an all-encompassing myth. La mala bora [In Evil Hour] takes another, wider view of the same t o w n depicted in El coronel, probably inspired by M a r s h a l l Sucre. T h e t o w n is under the authority of a lieutenant w h o wishes to leave behind his past of criminal repression and to inaugurate a new period of peace, convenient for his burgeoning financial empire. T h e main distraction is a series of scandalous posters that appear a n o n y m o u s l y , escaping the control of the civilian authority - the lieutenant - and the religious authority - a priest w h o painfully realizes he is u n a w a r e of the vital secrets of his parishioners. W h e n violence erupts again t o w a r d s the end of the novel, w h e n clandestine publications unleash the old resistance and repression, writing is silenced, intimating the horror that replaces the brief cease-fire. Cien años de soledad is the best-seller and the masterpiece of the Boom, the rare case of a novel that is enthusiastically received by the general public and by critics, at h o m e and abroad. T h e story line is complicated by the number of characters, but it is a straightforward family saga, from the founding of a t o w n , M a c o n d o , to its destruction one hundred years later. T h e leaders of the first settlers are a married couple of cousins, José A r c a d i o Buendia and Ursula Iguarán. H e r fear of having a child w i t h a pig's tail as a punishment for marrying inside the family delays the consummation of the marriage, brings about a murder, and forces them out of their original t o w n . A s did A d a m and Eve, they must civilize primal nature and, like them, they carry an original guilt, incest, and violence that they will pass on to their descendants. A roving band of gypsies brings n e w s from the outside w o r l d to M a c o n d o , astonishing José A r c a d i o w i t h such inventions as magnets, telescopes, ice, and alchemy. O n e of the gypsies, M e l q u í a d e s , becomes a friend of the family and eventually leaves behind prophetic writings in encoded Sanskrit that are only deciphered at the end of the novel by the last survivor of the Buendias. M u c h has happened that M e l q u í a d e s foresaw: the g r o w t h from settlement to a 240 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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bustling plantation t o w n and the bust after a strike that makes the o w n e r s leave the region; the long civil w a r between liberals and conservatives; the last birth in t o w n , a boy with a pig's tail, the son of A u r e l i a n o Babilonia Buendia and his aunt; and the end of time in a w h i r l w i n d . T h i s path from A r c a d i a to B a b y l o n is cluttered w i t h hundreds of memorable stories and images: a plague of insomnia, a rain of y e l l o w flowers, an intolerably beautiful w o m a n w h o ascends to H e a v e n , a trail of b l o o d that runs across t o w n from a murdered man to his mother, a visit by the W a n d e r i n g Jew, a levitating priest, a deluge, and so on. García M á r q u e z ' s prodigious capacity for invention - so great that w h a t he tells a l w a y s seems natural, more a retelling of ancestral myths and traditional stories than labored literary creation - fills every page with a breathless succession of unforgettable anecdotes, so rich and vivid that one of them w o u l d suffice for a w h o l e novel by most writers. Y e t , even if he never belabors a point or exhausts a character, the rise and fall of the Buendias is fully conveyed. W h i l e part of the charm of the b o o k is its unflappable reporting of amazing events - the exaggerated, outlandish, eccentric, monstrous, dreamlike, fabulous, all made quotidian by the impassive narrator of M a g i c a l Realism - G a r c í a M á r q u e z ' s timing and his uncanny gift of m a k i n g every sentence count are matchless, as has been discovered by the many frustrated imitators s p a w n e d by Cien años de soledad. T h e novel is highly structured, w i t h a similar anticipatory sentence at the beginning, middle, and end of the b o o k . T h e repeated names and characters establish the pattern of repetition that ultimately brings history to a halt. M i r r o r s a form of repetition - are everywhere: in the b e d r o o m , as identical twins, or as a prophetic text. A s a reflection of Spanish A m e r i c a n history, the descending spiral of the second part of the novel and the failure of M a c o n d o seem negative. Y e t the story is delivered w i t h o u t editorializing, w i t h the implied author almost invisible, to avoid interfering w i t h his created w o r l d . Critics are bound to continue to discuss and disagree about the ideological implications of this saga, the symbolic values and the narrative strategies of the text, much as they have done w i t h H o m e r and Cervantes. Ursula Iguarán, the practical w o m a n that keeps the family together, José A r c a d i o Buendia, the belated discoverer of the roundness of the Earth, and C o l o n e l Aureliano Buendia, w h o led thirty-two armed uprisings and lost* every time, have found a place a m o n g the great characters of literature. F r o m 1968 to 1975, G a r c í a M á r q u e z w r o t e El otoño del patriarca [The Autumn of the Patriarch}. In six chapters, each starting with a description of the ruinous condition of the palace on the day the dictator dies, several narrators - including the patriarch himself - reconstruct his long reign of terror, prodigiously extended to include in the past the arrival of C o l u m b u s to the N e w W o r l d . W h i l e the six long paragraphs that 241 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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constitute the novel and the absence of direct dialogue m a k e the full pages as oppressive as the atmosphere G a r c í a M á r q u e z evokes, each chapter develops a topic that adds a new, frequently surprising, detail to the dictator's necrology, focusing on the dictator and his double, the murder of his enemies, his loves w i t h a y o u n g queen of a beauty contest and w i t h a y o u n g nun, a portrait of his mother and the dictator's efforts to have her declared a saint, the sale of the sea to the United States, his life as a recluse and his death. T h e six chapters can be compared to six days not of creation but of destruction by a perverse g o d condemned to the loneliness of p o w e r . W h i l e the fidelity of the novel to its possible historical referents should not be assumed, and the creation of a n e w stereotype of the Latin A m e r i c a n dictator should be resisted, El otoño del patriarca clearly excels a m o n g the novels dedicated to the figure of the dictator. T h e uneasiness found already in the early chronicles of the discovery of A m e r i c a is still present in the mid-twentieth century. T h e imposing N a t u r e is not so much a topic any longer, but the never-resolved conflicts between different cultures and races, the intractable social inequities, the rebellions and the repressions, the variegated language spoken by many nations and in constant change, continue to challenge novelists and attract readers. M a n y authors of this period were tempted to fill the v a c u u m of information left by manipulated or c o w e d n e w s services and w e a k social sciences. W i t h a blurry image of themselves as a composite of historians, philosophers, priests, politicians, upholders of Western civilization, and curators of local tradition, novelists were often b o g g e d d o w n by their heady mission, stressing more the instructive than the pleasing aspect of literature. It w a s a noble cause that brought forth many important novels. In w h a t follows I review by region the notable authors, starting with M e x i c o in the north and ending w i t h Chile in the Southern Cone. T h e M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n is far from a closed subject, and most novelists of this period refer to it in their w o r k s . M o r e than a simple device to connect to a collective m e m o r y and stir up a familiar emotion, it is a constant and critical reexamination of the national myths that still sustain the current political p o w e r s . A continuator of a Realism that starts to sound tired in the 1950s, Agustín Y á ñ e z (1904-1980) describes different regions of M e x i c o with the ambition of a Muralist, but never repeating his success w i t h Al filo del agua (1947). La creation deals w i t h the artistic w o r l d of M e x i c o City, reporting the meteoric career of a musician w h o is a w o o d e n and predictable character. Ojerosa y pintada strings together the different rides of a taxi driver through an eventful night in M e x i c o City. La tierra 242 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950—1975 prodiga and Las tierras flacas [The Lean Lands] both deal with rural topics, the exploitation of the land in the coastal, hot region, and in the cold highlands, respectively. Even if they employ proven techniques, such as the use of italics for interior m o n o l o g u e s or flashbacks, the dialogue is stilted and the tone majestic, failing to bring to life the saga of land developers and the hardships of peasants. R o s a r i o Castellanos (1925-1974) w a s an essayist of considerable intelligence, a dramatist, poet, university professor, diplomat, and novel ist, that is, a true intellectual and a wise observer of M e x i c a n life. She graduated in 1950 from the N a t i o n a l University in M e x i c o City w i t h a controversial thesis called Sobre la cultura femenina where she explored some topics she w o u l d develop later related to the marginalization of w o m e n in a male-dominated society. Her first novel, Balun-Candn [The Nine Guardians], tells several stories that happen in the 1930s, w h e n President Cardenas promulgated l a w s favouring Indian communities. T h e novel is divided into three parts: the first sees the social unrest from the point of v i e w of the seven-year-old daughter of a farmer in C h i a p a s , in the mountains of southern M e x i c o . H e r nanny is an Indian w o m a n and the girl hears from her the local legends while she perceives painfully h o w the Indians are despised by the white population. T o r n by her love for her nanny and her sense of belonging to a family of landowners, she is further distressed by her g r o w i n g understanding of being disenfranchised for being female, since her younger brother is preferred to her as the future heir and continuator of the family lineage. T h e second section of the novel switches to a third-person narrator, taking a w a y any importance the girl could have in the social upheaval that ensues, an Indian rebellion that chases the family a w a y from their farm. T h e third part explores the guilt of the girl w h e n her brother dies and she believes it is partly her responsibility. Some m o n o l o g u e s of the g r o w n - u p s are artificial, but most of the novel recreates forcefully zones of conflict, in the family and in society, between sexes, races, social classes, and generations. Oficio de tinieblas takes another l o o k at the same period, yet here w i t h o u t the benefit of a first-person innocent narrator. T h e story unfolds slowly, s h o w i n g the life of an Indian c o m m u n i t y in the countryside and of landowners in a small t o w n . T h e outsiders, an ambitious y o u n g priest and an officer of the government, become catalysts of a rebellion fueled by the faith of one of the Indians in the n e w l a w s . T h e r e are many gruesome details about the exploitation of the Indians and the brutal state to w h i c h they have been reduced. T h e final, apocalyptic chapters, s h o w the crucifixion of a child to create an Indian counterpart of Jesus, and a hellish Indian rebellion. T h e most interesting aspect of Oficio de tinieblas is the w o m e n characters and their maneuvers to attain prominence and influence events: Catalina, the visionary Indian w o m a n w h o pretends to 243 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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LITERATURE

resurrect the cult of the old g o d s ; Julia, w h o wishes to become powerful by being accepted by the local elitist society; Idolina, w h o chooses total passivity and then writes letters that undermine the t o w n ; and all the w r o n g e d , repressed, marginalized w o m e n w h o are caught up in a society built by men on the basis of racial hatred and the exploitation of the p o o r . A brief novel, El viudo Román (in Los convidados de agosto), tells a story of revenge and a returned bride, w i t h intriguing similarities to García M á r q u e z ' s Crónica de una muerte anunciada (1981) [Chronicle of a Death Foretold], w h e r e Bay ardo San R o m á n similarly returns his bride. O f interest in Castellanos's novel are the descriptions of the marriageable girls of the t o w n and her considerations on the status of married w o m e n . Ultimately, Castellanos has to be valued not by any one novel but for her w h o l e w o r k , where a clear-headed portrait emerges of the conflicts of M e x i c a n society, especially in regard to Indians and w o m e n . A masterful portrayal of the aftermath of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n as seen through w o m e n ' s experience is Recuerdos del porvenir [Recollec tions of Things to Come] by Elena G a r r o (b. 1920). T h e novel is divided into t w o parts. T h e first one describes a t o w n in southern M e x i c o , Ixtepec, occupied by the troops of a northern general, Francisco R o s a s . T h e general is tormented by the mysterious past of his lover, Julia A n d r a d e . T h e t o w n is obsessed by Julia's beauty and aloofness, until an outsider with magic p o w e r s escapes w i t h her in an instant in w h i c h time is suspended. Julia, like Helen of T r o y , is never described, but her beauty kindles the imagination and is the origin of strife. She lives in the G a r d e n Hotel, an allusion to Paradise and Eve. H e r abduction and fall m a k e of w o m e n a central yet apparently passive agent of change. T h e second part of the novel describes an episode of the cristero insurrection (1927-1929), an uprising against the M e x i c a n government's measures to limit the influence of the C a t h o l i c church. T o save the priest and the parson, the t o w n organizes a party to distract R o s a s , but the plan fails. T h e sister of one of the executed rebels goes over to the other side and becomes the lover of R o s a s to be finally punished by becoming a statue of stone. B e y o n d the interest of Recuerdos del porvenir as a historical, existentialist, or mythical novel, its greatest importance lies in the a m b i g u o u s and powerful description of w o m e n , forced into seclusion and dependence, aggressively passive, and expecting redemption from the love of the same men w h o oppress them. Juan José A r r e ó l a (b. 1918) w a s well k n o w n as a short-story writer before his novel La feria [The Fair] appeared in M e x i c o in 1963. T h e text is a collection of fragments, mostly dialogues, diaries, and documents of an imaginary t o w n south of Jalisco. T h e time frame is provided by the efforts of a shoe-maker to become a farmer and cultivate maize. T h e meticulous description of the tilling of the land, the s o w i n g , the nerve244 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950—1975 w r a c k i n g w a i t for rain and g r o w t h , the fear of birds, pests, and w e e d s , all take a poetic grandeur w h e n juxtaposed w i t h idle chatter in a t o w n obsessed w i t h the preparation of its festivities, the feria, for w h i c h the Indians contribute their money and three gold c r o w n s are made for the sacred images in the church. O t h e r events, such as the Indian fight for vindication of their rights to the land, a strong earthquake, the removal of the t o w n priest, the misadventures of the local A t h e n a e u m , all c o m e together from the many voices of the text. La feria is the perfect e x a m p l e of Bakhtin's dialogic imagination, since it uses a polyphonic language based in a carnivalesque, irreverential concept of the universe. If Arreóla does have a limitation in this novel, it lies paradoxically in his sense of humor, in his wit, that slants the possible tragedy of this t o w n into a celebration of gossip and the down-to-earth perspective of the joke. T h e long confession w h e r e a character - the t o w n itself - accuses herself and himself " o f everything," is f o l l o w e d by the absolution of all sins, explicitly s h o w i n g the implicit author's unflattering yet compassionate portrayal of human evil and foolishness. T h e evolution of Vicente Leñero (b. 1933) is illustrative of the shift of interest in this period from the study of the existential crisis of an individual to the recording of the conditions of the life of the w o r k i n g class, and then to a focus on writing itself. Leñero's first novel, La voz adolorida, later offered in a revised version as A fuerza de palabras, is the m o n o l o g u e of a man w h o may or may not be mad and w h o claims he w a s separated from his wife and had his son stolen from him by his t w o aunts and his best friend. T h e indeterminacy of the story and the hostile nature of the w o r l d is reiterated in Leñero's second novel, Los albañiles, where the murder of a night-watchman is never solved, while almost all characters have motives for killing him. T h e study of a layer of M e x i c a n society is convincing and well couched in the suspense of the police case. W i t h Estudio Q, Leñero explores freedom and writing, using as his subtext Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. A famous soap-opera star is filming a story about his o w n life and finds that he is unable to function independently from the script, frequently modified to co-opt his impulsive actions. T h i s is a remarkable novel, w i t h much of the h u m o r and critical understanding of p o p culture that is also found in some novels by Puig or V a r g a s Llosa. In El garabato, there is a narrative frame that presents the novel of a critic w h o is reading a novel, in a c o m p l e x and amusing juxtaposition of styles. Redil de ovejas studies Catholicism in M e x i c o through a convoluted story centered on a priest and his sister, first a y o u n g flirt and then an old recluse w h o baptizes animals and gives H o l y C o m m u n i o n to her cat. T h e ambition of an all-encompassing novel surfaces in José Trigo, by Fernando del Paso (b. 1935), a rhapsodic text about the organizers of a 245 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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railroad strike in i960, w i t h t w o chapters dedicated to an episode of the cristero insurrection in the 1920s. H o w e v e r , p r o b a b l y the most m o v i n g and effective novel of the younger writers is Morirás lejos ( M e x i c o , 1967), by the M e x i c a n poet José Emilio Pacheco (b. 1939). T h i s brief text is brilliantly constructed, alternating paragraphs dedicated to elaborate theories about the identity - or even existence - of a man in an apartment, l o o k i n g through the blinds at another man in a public square w h o may be stalking him, w i t h other paragraphs that describe the fall of Jerusalem and the H o l o c a u s t . T h e pages bristle w i t h horrible details laconically stated, as though the infinite proliferation of language and hairsplitting casuistry had to stop w h e n confronted by the horror of undisputable facts. Cabalistic symbols and references to the alchemists, a n e t w o r k of intertextual allusions to film, painting, and literature, and the recurrent reminders of the confusion at Babel (a water t o w e r in the public square, a reproduction of Brueghel's painting " T h e T o w e r of B a b e l " in the recluse's apartment), point to the need to continue the fight against absolute p o w e r and the search for a better and more compassionate life. A n o t h e r writer w h o s e novel w a s well received in M e x i c o in this period is Juan Vicente M e l o (b. 1932). La obediencia nocturna is enigmatic, w i t h scribbled d r a w i n g s , interspersed Latin - suggesting a confession - and a disillusioned l o o k at the author's generation. Central A m e r i c a n literature in this period is concerned with topics already traditional: dictatorship, the Indian cultures, and exploitation by A m e r i can companies. O v e r s h a d o w i n g other novelists in the region is the 1967 N o b e l Prize winner, M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias (1899-1974). H e found his voice w i t h the surrealist m o v e m e n t in Paris, developing then a theory for analyzing economic and social history in the mirror of myth and psychoanalysis. H e returned to live in G u a t e m a l a in 1933. El Señor Presidente had been written between 1922 and 1932, but w a s privately published in M e x i c o in 1946, while Asturias w a s there as Cultural Attache. It received w i d e attention only w h e n Editorial L o s a d a in Buenos Aires published an edition in 1948, b e c o m i n g extremely influential in the 1950s. Asturias turned next to the central embodiment of foreign exploitation, the banana plantations of the United Fruit C o m p a n y . His trilogy starts w i t h Viento fuerte [Strong Wind], where he describes the heroic origins of the, banana plantations, w h e n the struggle to bridle N a t u r e ' s productivity brought together foreigners and natives in a c o m m o n effort. Later, though, exploitation begins, and the administration of the United Fruit C o m p a n y is seen as only interested in increasing profits. A rich A m e r i c a n shareholder travels undercover to G u a t e m a l a to see h o w the c o m p a n y is operating and is w o n over by the country and the people, setting up a 246 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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parallel operation and improving conditions for w o r k e r s . T h e novel becomes unavoidably programmatic, despite the complexity of the story, the luxurious language, the spells of magic, and explorations of the deep subconscious. A final storm destroys the w o r k of the planters and kills the helping A m e r i c a n couple, anticipating future confrontations. M u c h of the material is taken from C . D . Kepner and J. H . SoothilPs study The Banana Empire: A Case Study in Economic Imperialism ( N e w Y o r k , 1935). El papa verde [The Green Pope] chronicles the rise of a y o u n g A m e r i c a n from C h i c a g o , G e o M a k e r T h o m p s o n , to the presidency of the fruit c o m p a n y . T h e conflict is first between exploitation of the land by a c o m p a n y and its possession by the natives, w h o are deeply attached to their homes and d o not w i s h to sell. G e o M a k e r , a creator of sorts, is opposed in his plans by his servant, C h i p o C h i p o , and his fiancee, M a y a r i , w h o commits ritual suicide by d r o w n i n g , an action that is considered by the Indians as a w e d d i n g ceremony. T h e rest of the novel follows G e o M a k e r ' s rise to p o w e r , the constantly threatened success of his banana plantations, and his attempts to have the United States take over G u a t e m a l a . T h e second part of the novel continues the story of Viento fuerte, w i t h the inheritance of the A m e r i c a n couple and its disruptive effect. T h e novel closes with G e o M a k e r ' s ascent to the presidency of the c o m p a n y . Asturias deploys here a c o m p l e x structure, w i t h suspense and revelations, yet these turns and twists w o u l d turn out to be mechanical if it were not for the sustained beauty of Asturias's writing and the intertwin ing of M a y a n myths. Los ojos de los enterrados [The Eyes of the Interred], as popular w i s d o m claims, are open until the injustices they have seen are atoned. Here a general strike, based on the historical one of June 1944, brings d o w n the dictator and extracts important concessions from the fruit c o m p a n y . El alhajadito s h o w s the fantasy-world of a child w h o does not k n o w w h o his mother is, only that she is one of t w o sisters, facing a similar dilemma to that of Spanish A m e r i c a , undecided between the Indian and the European tradition. N o t h i n g n e w is added w i t h his other novels. Mulata de tal [Mulatto] is a G u a t e m a l a n version of Faust. Maladron looks at sixteenth-century G u a t e m a l a n and Spanish soldiers. In 1972, he published Viernes de dolores, in w h i c h he recalls the history of the student generation of 1922 in G u a t e m a l a . Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), the son of a French father and a Russian mother, made of his o w n problematic identity as a bilingual F r e n c h Spanish speaker, a Europeanized C u b a n , a scholar interested in architec ture and music yet best k n o w n as a novelist, the starting point for an Odysseus-like search for a Spanish A m e r i c a n h o m e . H e w r o t e an import ant theoretical statement in the prologue to El reino de este mundo {1949) 2-47 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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[The Kingdom of This World], where he c o m p a r e d the astonishing reality he had seen in Haiti during a trip in 1943 to the European, especially surrealist, labored attempts to generate the marvelous w i t h tired formulas. A m e r i c a w a s for Carpentier the continent of the real-maravilloso, where simply painting or describing reality presents an extra ordinary N a t u r e and history that can only be dreamt about by Europeans. Even if Carpentier later modified his ideas, and introduced the B a r o q u e as a defining trait of Spanish A m e r i c a n reality and writing, his concept of /0 real-maravilloso had lasting influence on novelists and critics, creating a marketing brand that w o u l d help the sale of Spanish A m e r i c a n novels abroad. Los pasos perdidos [The Lost Steps], his best-known novel, w a s written in C a r a c a s , where Carpentier lived for a fifteen-year period from 1945 to 1959. T h e unnamed narrator tells his o w n story of liberation and loss. Leaving behind in a large metropolis an unfulfilling j o b and a boring marriage, he goes to the Spanish A m e r i c a n jungle to search for a primitive instrument that marks the border-line between magic and science, bird call and song. His trip becomes a journey in time, as he first happens into the romantic period, and then pushes forth up mountains and d o w n rivers into the lands of the horse and the d o g , and ultimately reaches a place where history seems to have begun, the zero hour of h u m a n development. H e is incapable of simply living in that constant present, and his observations are persistently couched in comparisons with European myth and literature. W h i l e he does recover some of the immediacy of childhood and an untroubled pleasure of the senses, he cannot control his mind w h i c h seduces him a w a y from a primitive participation in life to the sophisticated roles of a naturalist, historian, or botanist, w i t h an urge to classify and explain. H e also experiences a flood of creative ideas for a musical piece, but he runs out of paper to make them last in time, to give them a history. His lover, R o s a r i o , w h o has in her African, Indian, and European b l o o d , refuses to marry him, explaining that she wishes to preserve her freedom, and the narrator feels irked by this missing document. T h e excess of ideas and images that he has been unable to leave behind m a k e him accept an offer of a return to the city, from where he will never find the w a y back to his brief Paradise. T h i s is an allegoric trip, phrased in European terms, useful as descrip tions - for e x a m p l e , the y o u n g intellectuals w h o are so interested in Europe are blinded to their A m e r i c a n reality as the victims of the M i n o t a u r - while simultaneously this cultural baggage is rejected as stifling and unnatural. T h e title Los pasos perdidos, that refers to the wasted life of the narrator and to the lost paths that led once to an innocent past, echoes Breton's collection of essays Les pas perdus published in 1924 - Carpentier lived in Paris from 1928 to 1939 - while the 248 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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three V-signs that mark the entrance into the most primitive land could refer to a journal edited by Breton, D u c h a m p , and M a x Ernst in N e w Y o r k from 1942 to 1944, while they were exiled there during the Second W o r l d W a r . In L o s pasos perdidos, the cloud of butterflies that obscures the sun, the mind-boggling coexistence of all races, of pre-history and every historic period in a Spanish A m e r i c a n region, are marvels enough that can be read as a counterpoint to the productions of Breton's, D u c h a m p ' s , or Ernst's frenzied imagination. A note at the end of the novel identifies places and characters w i t h real t o w n s , rivers and people, reinforcing the peculiar tension between a deeply felt historical reality and an archetypal, allegorical universality. O n the one hand, as R o b e r t o G o n z á l e z Echevarría has proven in Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home, there is in the novel a carefully modified version of the real trips made by Carpentier in 1947 and 1948. Y e t the implicit truthfulness of autobiography is refracted and diluted by the many faces the hero dons over his unnamed self: Jason, Ulysses, D o n Q u i x o t e , O r p h e u s , A d a m , and others. Even if the novel threatens to collapse under the weight of its many layers of reference and intertextuality, and even if there may be an excess in the deliberate descriptions that imitate the polyphonic and simultaneous richness of a musical c o m p o sition, this highly structured essayistic novel has ultimately proven convincing to most critics for its depth, imaginative p o w e r , and rich, elegant, Baroque language. El acoso [ " M a n h u n t " ] is based on a historical event, the murder of a student-activist in the 1930s. O f extreme narrative complexity with its different narrators and parallel story lines, El acoso s h o w s the simulta neous existence of politics, sex, violence, and art in a large city, as the fugitive crosses paths w i t h a humble employee at a concert hall where the orchestra is playing Beethoven's T h i r d S y m p h o n y . Neither w o m e n , politics, nor art offer final salvation in El acoso, yet there is a consolation in the splendor of the senses and the richness of life undiminished by suffering and death, as is suggested by the parallels the novel establishes between the death of the fugitive and Christ's redemptive Passion. El siglo de las luces [Explosion in a Cathedral] is on the surface a traditional historical novel that follows the fate of one family - C a r l o s , his sister Sofia, and their cousin Esteban - while it describes the period from the events leading to the French R e v o l u t i o n to those preceding Spanish A m e r i c a n independence. T h e cycles of liberation, anarchy, terror, and repression that revolution brings forth are given paradigmatic signifi cance by pointing at similarities between the ideology of modernity in the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. T h e spiral progression of history does devour the characters, but not before they have had a chance to decide about their actions in a manner that s h o w s Carpentier's indebted249 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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ness to Existentialism. W h i l e Victor H u g u e s - a character based on a historical figure - goes from organizer and revolutionary to tyrant and exploiter, his youthful actions and writings have b e c o m e an inspiration for others. T h e opposition frequent in Carpentier's writing between Europe and Spanish A m e r i c a is reduced here to a carefully shaded study of the c o m m o n ideological bases of change in France and the C a r i b b e a n . El siglo de las luces is brilliant in its creation of a vast and intricate historical p a n o r a m a where characters strive to find themselves, while T i m e runs simultaneously w i t h different clocks and History hides its origins a n d motives. El recurso del metodo [Reasons of State] begins in Paris, where an extremely refined and decadent Spanish A m e r i c a n dictator enjoys a vacation surrounded by splendor and adulation. After a short visit to his h o m e country to quell a rebellion, he finds w h e n he returns to Paris that the newspapers have informed about his brutal methods and he is given the cold shoulder, until the First W o r l d W a r distracts the attention of the public from his actions. A second rebellion forces him again to resort to the use of methodic violence. His country shifts from French influence to N o r t h A m e r i c a n as the dictator ages. T h i s alternation between a here the unnamed country that is a composite of several Latin A m e r i c a n countries - and a there - France or the United States - marks the dependence of this fictional nation on the more developed nations that serve as super-egos because they can hide their o w n brutality and racism under the veneer of rationality, art, and rhetoric. A s usual in Carpentier's novels, much of the action in El recurso del metodo invites allegorical reading and borders dangerously on a parade of stereotypes. T h e mummies found by the dictator in a cave, the meeting between T h e Dictator and T h e Student, the general strike that deposes the dictator, the Spanish A m e r i c a n dictator in Paris, are some examples of elements in w h i c h the learned essay and literary c o m m o n p l a c e lurk uncomfortably under the novelistic surface. Carpentier's dictator corrects the lopsided view of Spanish A m e r i c a n strongmen as emanations of an untamed nature and as telluric, savage forces. W h i l e he does provide a portrait of the refinements of w h i c h such despots have been capable, Carpentier pays less attention - much like the dictator himself - to the internal matters of his invented country, so that it does not c o m e fully to life as a real society. Concierto barroco [Concierto Barroco] is an amusing short novel about the trip to Europe made by a M e x i c a n of Spanish descent and his C u b a n servant. T h e M e x i c a n ' s disappointment w i t h M a d r i d is mitigated by a j o y o u s sojourn in Venice, where they meet V i v a l d i , Handel, and Scarlatti, and participate in a wild musical soiree w i t h nuns at the Ospedale della Pieta. T h e rhythm and singing of the C u b a n drive the European musicians to a frenzy that celebrates the Spanish A m e r i c a n 250 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950—1975 Black, Indian, and other - contribution to Western music. Appropriately, the text jumps in time, juxtaposing H a n d e l ' s trumpets and Louis A r m strong's, V i v a l d i ' s opera on a M e x i c a n theme and Stravinsky, underlining the p o r o u s fabric of musical tradition and reaching eventually an epiphany w h e r e music and literature, A m e r i c a and Europe, past and present are blended together in an island, Venice, that is presented as a European kindred spirit of C u b a , a Utopian place where Carpentier could have felt at h o m e . For younger writers the only topic, overt or not, became the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n . T h e most readable novel of those that tried to describe its spirit using the resources of social realism is La ultima mujer y el proximo combate by M a n u e l Cofiiio L o p e z (1936-1986). It describes the conflicts arising from implementing a p r o g r a m of forestal and agrarian develop ment, exemplified by the doubts and travails of the n e w director w h o arrives from H a v a n a to meet love, solidarity, and death in the country side. T h e style is accessible, the structure easy to follow, the characters are neatly divided between the g o o d revolutionaries and the bad counter revolutionaries. La ultima mujer w o n the C a s a de las A m e r i c a s prize in 1971 and w a s re-edited in 1972 by Siglo Veintiuno in M e x i c o and the C e n t r o Editor de A m e r i c a Latina in Buenos Aires, assuring it a w i d e readership. H o w e v e r , Cofiiio's schematic w o r l d and austere prose did not correspond to the mainstream of the period. M o r e interesting is the w o r k of E d m u n d o Desnoes, since it captures w i t h unusual equanimity the enthusiasm and the anguish that the C u b a n Revolution brought, often to the same person. El cataclismo is a triptych, with one story line focusing on a man w h o leaves for M i a m i w h e n his properties are expropriated, another where his wife, w h o stays behind and lives w i t h a bureaucrat of the R e v o l u t i o n , tries to adapt to the n e w circumstances, but fails, and a final thread where a proletarian couple marry and plan the future with optimism. Desnoes's best-known w o r k is Memorias del subdesarrollo [Inconsolable Memories], that became a highly praised film under the direction of T o m a s Gutierrez A l e a . T h e s e memoirs of a man trapped by the R e v o l u t i o n trace his g r o w i n g sense of despondency and marginality as he discovers he is unable to take part in t h e change wholeheartedly, but also abhors taking the extreme position of his wife and some of his friends w h o have fled in blind terror to the United States. T h i s parable of the intellectual's crucible transcends the specific C u b a n situation where it originates, since the narrator is not the first or last intellectual to recognize the justice of a cause that threatens to undo the very class that has nurtured him. T h e underdevelopment here is manifold: from the economic imbalance that has prompted the R e v o l u tion, to the exquisite refinement of the C u b a n bourgeoisie that did not develop a culture rooted in its o w n reality and open to others - the p o o r ,

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the w o r k i n g classes - and also to the narrator's revelation that his love life has been stifled, undeveloped. R e i n a l d o (also spelt Reynaldo) Arenas (1943, C u b a ) is imaginative and cleverly outrageous in his early novels. Celestino antes del alba s h o w s the fragmented and obsessed conscience of a child w h o lives w i t h his mother, his grandparents, and a cousin, Celestino. T h e text describes his percep tions and dreams as he is battered and abused by his family. T h e w o r d " h a c h a " - his grandfather axes d o w n the trees where the child inscribes his poetry - is repeated as an incantatory denunciation of repressive society. Arenas uses many avant-garde techniques, such as inserting quotations that interrupt (or complement) the text, and providing several possible endings. In the final pages, Celestino becomes in part a theatre play, reminiscent of L o r c a . In El mundo alucinante. (Una novela de aventuras.) [Hallucinations], Servando, the protagonist, is an outsider w h o is t h r o w n into a w o r l d of orgies, sadistic pleasure, and dependency. Learning and b o o k s set him apart, leading him to heterodox opinions about the indigenous origin of the Virgin of G u a d a l u p e . Banished to prison in Spain, he manages to escape, experiences the corruption of the Spanish church and M a d r i d , meets in Europe numerous famous people, and even visits the other w o r l d , in the tradition of D a n t e and Q u e v e d o . A t long last he lives to see M e x i c o ' s independence from Spain, but only to again reject the imitation of the old ceremonies and the repetition of the old cruelty by the n e w ruling class. T h e r e is a connecting element w i t h the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n , the image of a scientist - a thinly veiled allusion to Carpentier - blindly praising the n e w government. A r e n a s ' s novels transcend the childhood memories or the straightforward adventure novel, offering as an antidote to the repression of an unquestioning society, a free-wheeling text that does not a l l o w any distinction between fantasy and reality. For a detailed and authoritative guide to the C u b a n novel of this period, the reader should consult Seymour M e n t o n ' s Prose Fiction of the Cuban Revolution. O t h e r C u b a n writers, more concerned w i t h textual experi mentation, will be treated in the fourth section of this chapter. T h e struggle in Puerto R i c o against a destiny of colonialism is illustrated in an outstanding novel that merits to be better k n o w n , Figuraciones en el mes de marzo [Schemes in the Month of March] by Emilio D i a z Valcarcel (b. 1929). T h e main character is a Puerto R i c a n in Spain w h o is subjected to the arrogance of the faded empire and w h o s e only defense is to reflect on the absurd aspects of language, people, and situations. T h i s funny, creative, sometimes w h i n i n g , other times angry, novel, that juxtaposes lists, clippings, letters, dialogues, receipts, in a sadly hilarious meditation on the inanity of the h u m a n condition, should be counted a m o n g the best 252 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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in the period. El hombre que trabajo lunes is a short novel about a bureaucrat exasperated w i t h his perfunctory life, an old and proven topic, handled w i t h h u m o r and insight. In C o l o m b i a , the inheritance of the civil w a r (1899-1902), that t o o k at least 100,000 lives, and the period k n o w n as la violencia (1948-1957), a savage confrontation between liberals and conservatives, keeps the topic of violence in center stage. Eduardo C a b a l l e r o C a l d e r o n (b. 1910, Bogota) is a C o l o m b i a n essayist, journalist, diplomat, and novelist w h o in his best-known novel, El Cristo de espaldas, offers a glimpse of the bloody conflict between the conserva tives and liberals in a small provincial t o w n . T h e precipitating factor is the arrival of a y o u n g priest, intent on a life of humble sainthood and service. W h e n he arrives he discovers there is no neutral or sacred ground in a political geography fraught w i t h danger and inscrutable to his outsider's eyes. T h e murder of the head of the conservative party in the region is attributed to his estranged son w h o , readers soon discover, is innocent. T h e priest tries to protect him and get a fair trial, but the conservative forces of the region are using the case to imprison and w e a k e n their adversaries, therefore rapidly pushing the priest into an uncomfortable alliance w i t h the liberals. A t the request of powerful conservatives, the priest is removed and forced to return to the city, leaving behind a godless w h i r l w i n d of violence. T h e somber and sharp descriptions of the t o w n s people, the sociologist's eye of the author for unraveling secret alliances and influences give a vivid picture of this t o w n w h i c h represents the country torn by civil strife. T h e violence is forcefully depicted in El dia senalado, by M a n u e l Mejia Vallejo (b. 1923). T h e novel w e a v e s together the story of a saintly priest and his parishioners w i t h private and social cyclic acts of destruction and regeneration. T h e dialogue is laconic and the description of the t o w n and the cock-fights generates a stark atmosphere of oppressive heat and tension. Mejia Vallejo's other t w o novels in this period are more lyrical and less compelling: Al pie de la ciudad, an extended vignette of the urban p o o r , and Aire de tango, an evocation of G a r d e l and the dim portrait of a C o l o m b i a n tough w h o excels by his mastery at t h r o w i n g knives. T h e repression of the strike on the banana plantations in D e c e m b e r 1928, depicted in a crucial segment of G a r c i a M a r q u e z ' s Cien anos de soledad, is the main event in La casa grande by A l v a r o C e p e d a Samudio (1926-1972). Dialogues of soldiers, documents, m o n o l o g u e s by different members of a family divided between supporters of the strikers and opponents to their demands, and an alternation between first-, second-, and third-person narrative give this novel a w i d e perspective, despite its brevity. T h e variety in technique and the amplitude of vision are, 2-53 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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unfortunately, not matched by a sure hand for avoiding stereotypical characters and situations. G u s t a v o A l v a r e z G a r d e a z á b a l (b. 1945), university professor, journal ist, politician, and a novelist of great popular success, writes about political violence, corruption, and provincial life w i t h a courage that sets him apart from others w h o have covered the same topics. His language fluctuates between a rich and c o m p l e x fabric that borders on the Baroque, and a sparse, journalistic shorthand that gains in urgency and immediacy w h a t it loses in refinement. Deserving of note is Cóndores no entierran todos los días, about the rise of the conservative repression in T u l u á during la violencia, and the 3,000 dead in that region under the hegemony of a quiet leader, L e ó n M a r í a L o z a n o , k n o w n as " T h e C o n d o r . " T h e novel does not d w e l l on the reasons for the violence, but admirably describes its irrational spread. A l v a r e z G a r d e a z á b a l ' s La tara del papa is a polyphonic narration o f t o w n conflicts, centered on the family saga of the Uribes, that converge into the start of la violencia, while Dabeiba, using as a pretext the need to abandon the t o w n of D a b e i b a , creates a tapestry - from w h i c h dialogue is expunged - of sex, p o w e r , violence, and m e m o r y that borders on gossip, yet manages to convey the suffocating lack of intimacy of a small t o w n . El bazar de los idiotas includes some elements of M a g i c a l Realism in telling the story of t w o miraculous brothers w h o , despite their limited intelli gence, possess the gift of curing the sick by the p o w e r the brothers receive while masturbating. T h i s striking allegory of political p o w e r is told w i t h narrative vigor and subdued lyricism. A m o n g the younger novelists, A l b a l u c i a A n g e l (b. 1939) w r o t e her first three novels in Europe. Los girasoles en invierno describes the thoughts of a w o m a n waiting for a man in a Parisian café. A second story line about an expedition to Venus is intercalated. T h e second chapter takes place in R o m e , transcribing the chatter of intellectuals in the style of Fellini or A n t o n i o n i . T h i s novel, w i t h almost no action and very little psychological insight, represents a search for a w a y out of the traditional C o l o m b i a n countryside. In Dos veces Alicia, A l b a l u c i a A n g e l follows the model of the detective novel. T h e narrator observes w i t h disgusted fascination the disintegrating family of the o w n e r of the boarding house where she is staying in L o n d o n . T h e story is ingenious, w i t h unexpected interruptions, the titles of chapters inserted in the middle of sections, temporal jumps, intertextual play, suspense, and fantasies. T h e r e is a long scene at a Cnristmas party where (in a parody of a detective novel) the mystery of the life of M r s . W i l s o n is revealed. T h e novel is interesting because it communicates the passion and pains of a small g r o u p , seen sarcastically by the exasperated narrator. Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón is a disjointed novel, 254 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950—1975 where public events are a counterpoint to the private life of the p r o t a g o nist, A n a . T h e frame of the narration is given by a recurrent situation: A n a refuses to get up in the morning, while the maid, Sabina, receives her confidences and tries to encourage her to get out of bed. T h e first part is an effective counterpoint between the murder of the liberal leader Jorge Eliécer G a i t á n on A p r i l 9, 1948, and the secluded life of the girls in a Catholic school run by nuns. T h e efforts of society to keep w o m e n a w a y from p o w e r are s h o w n by the fact that they are barred from games, information, and are sexually abused. T h e novel is made up of voices, w i t h many references to movies, fairy tales, and commercial brands. W h i l e there are some letters from prison that explain the motivation of C o l o m b i a n guerrillas, and a detailed presentation of the murder of several students on June 8 and 9, 1954, w i t h the subsequent censorship of the press, the motives for A n a ' s participation are sentimental, and her highest contribution to the cause seems to be to m a k e love to her best friend's lover. A s a document, the novel is extremely valuable, even if it does read in part as a self-indulgent memoir. T h e uneasiness of urban intellectual men is documented in Crónica de tiempo muerto by O s c a r C o l l a z o s (b. 1942), T h e action happens mostly in B o g o t á , w i t h incursions into Paris and M a d r i d . Sharing his disgust for bourgeois intelligentsia w i t h C o r t á z a r and his anger against signs of identity w i t h Juan G o y t i s o l o , C o l l a z o s parades a bored, frequently drunk, leftist writer through several parties and affairs while, as a counterpoint, scenes of student unrest and torture s h o w that a real fight is g o i n g on elsewhere. T h e narrator offers an amazingly crude vision of w o m e n , reducing them to sex-obsessed victims of repression longing to be forced into pleasure by a manly man. T h e moralizing essays, the righteous furor, and the blind behavior and pitiful self-aggrandizement of the protagonist of Crónica de tiempo muerto are symptomatic of w h a t could g o w r o n g w i t h revolutionary discourse. In Ecuador, Demetrio Aguilera M a l t a (1909-1981) continued to write the sort of journalistic novels that had been successful for him in the past, taking his inspiration from the Spanish novelist Pérez G a l d ó s . W h i l e there is certainly some literary merit to these novels - they are eminently readable and informative, even if mannered - their main purpose is to bring history to the reader w i t h a wealth of detail that is harmlessly s w a l l o w e d w i t h the syrup of entertaining narration. In Una cruz en la Sierra Maestra, he tackles the recent events of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n . La caballeresa del sol [Manuela] tells the story of Bolivar's lover, M a n u e l a Sáenz. El Quijote de El Dorado describes the A m a z o n s and the adventures of Francisco de Orellana. Un nuevo mar para el rey is devoted to the navigator B a l b o a , the Indian princess A n a y a n s i , and the Pacific O c e a n . 2-55 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Aguilera M a l t a ' s proven craft as a journalist and a chronicler of the c o m p l e x reality of Spanish A m e r i c a cannot prepare the reader for the extraordinary quality of his next novel, a m o n g the best in the period, Siete lunas y siete serpientes [Seven Serpents and Seven Moons]. A freshness of style, humor, and a fireworks display of verbal ingeniousness, plus an absorbing plot told w i t h daring craft, retell an old story w i t h a new twist and the force of a classic. In a small t o w n in the jungle, modernity — g o o d and evil - fights the past - equally mixed in value. M e d i c i n e and witchcraft mingle freely, as d o fantasy and fiction. A l l the staple characters are here, even duplicated: the g o o d and the bad doctor, the saintly and the corrupt priest, the ruthless entrepreneur, the local caudillo. Aguilera M a l t a adds to the b r e w the scheming witch-doctor, m o n k e y s , and Christ and the Devil, t w o of the most amusing characters of the novel. Indigenous religion and Catholicism m i x w i t h o u t radical conflict, in a harmonious view of the w o r l d where, for a change, things turn out all right w i t h o u t the complexity or seriousness of the issues being simplified. G r e g o r y R a b a s sa's English translation is brilliant, a creative achievement in its o w n right. T h e exceptional nature of Siete lunas in Aguilera M a l t a ' s output is further underscored by the heavy-handed satire of a dictator in El secuestro del general. T h e grotesque and parodie elements smother the story, adding little to an already long and c r o w d e d tradition of novels about dictatorship and violence in Spanish A m e r i c a . In Venezuela, the story is the new urban violence. Salvador G a r m e n d i a (b. 1928) describes city life as seen from the perspective of the l o w e r middle class. His first novel, Los pequeños seres, s h o w s the complete b r e a k d o w n of a minor office employee after the death of his boss and just at the m o m e n t w h e n , after decades of stagnation, he appears to have an opportunity for a p r o m o t i o n . T h e shifts of the narrative point of view and the protagonist's hallucinations contrasted w i t h his family routine are effective. G a r m e n d i a ' s more ambitious novel w i t h a similar topic, La mala vida, is a rambling memoir of an uninteresting life. T h e insistence on a deteriorating vulgar life, made tolerable to the characters if not to the reader by an existentialist w a l l o w i n g in anguish, continues in Los habitantes, Diaz de ceniza, and Los pies de barro. Memorias de Altagracia shifts to the perspective of a child w h o g r o w s up in a rural t o w n and later remembers the military feuds, the passional dramas, and the episodes of madness that shaped his otherwise unremarkable life. A n g e l R a m a , in a favorable and excellent study of G a r m e n d i a ' s w o r k , called his style "informalist" and c o m p a r e d it w i t h the free association characteristic of a session w i t h an analyst. A d r i a n o G o n z á l e z L e ó n (b. 1933) w o n the Biblioteca Breve prize of the Seix Barral publishing house in Barcelona in 1968 w i t h País portátil. T h r e e 256 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950—1975 parallel stories run through the novel: the first reconstructs the violence in the countryside in the early part of the century, w i t h a patriarchal family and an army general. T h e second story line s h o w s the repressive violence of the police in C a r a c a s in the 1960s, after the hesitant progress to militant action of a university student, A n d r é s , w h o is s h o w n in the third story line as he travels through C a r a c a s to complete a clandestine mission. In Pais portátil, violence is an inheritance that cannot be avoided, reasoned a w a y , or o v e r c o m e w i t h solidarity or love, w h e n revolutionary violence is easily squashed by the government. T h e language is rich and the portrait of C a r a c a s has vigor, yet the novel does not have the depth of C o r t á z a r ' s Libro de Manuel nor the vastness of Fuentes's La región más transparente. José M a r í a A r g u e d a s ( 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 6 9 ) received his degree in ethnology in 1962, and w o r k e d as a university professor. His novels present the Indian w o r l d , w i t h its traditions, language, music, and conflicts. T h e narrator keeps in mind the ignorance that his readers w o u l d have about the represented w o r l d ; there is a pedagogical streak in A r g u e d a s ' s writing, even up to his last diary in w h i c h he explains his suicide to friends, editor, employer, students, and readers. A r g u e d a s ' s novels present a conflicting and divided w o r l d , yet the language seems to flow from inside both cultures. A r g u e d a s holds the Indians in high esteem and he does not patronize them or transform them into the exotic aesthetic Other. N o t a b l e in A r g u e d a s ' s w o r k s is his language, where Q u e c h u a and Spanish w o r d s surge together as brought out directly from an experience where they coexist and complement each other. A r g u e d a s ' s lyricism, syntax, and vocabulary s h o w the contribution the native Indian language that he learnt as a child has had on Peruvian culture. O n e of the essential novels of this period is A r g u e d a s ' s Los ríos profundos [Deep Rivers]. T h i s Bildungsroman about Ernesto, a white boy w h o has been brought up a m o n g the Indians, presents the most convinc ing appeal for respecting the vigor and creativity of Peru's native culture. Separated from his father, an itinerant l a w y e r , w h e n he is fourteen years old, Ernesto has to find a space of his o w n , where the old and the n e w language, Q u e c h u a and Spanish, can coexist. Life in the school at A b a n c a y is wonderfully described (a suffocating yet also nurturing place of acculturation and learning, run by priests), as is C u z c o in the first chapter, w h e n Ernesto visits his powerful uncle, o w n e r of four haciendas, and discovers the sadness of Spanish culture superimposed on the living stones of Inca fortifications. T h e outside w o r l d comes in w i t h an insurrection of the mestizo w o m e n w h o sell chicha, w h o complain, at first successfully, against the hoarding of salt. T h e n the troops arrive to restore order and punish the rebels. Outside and inside, private and public prove to be false distinctions here, because things are magically connected by the 2-57 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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deep rivers of culture, b l o o d , and language. T h e director of Ernesto's school will appease the rebels, playing on their emotions and infusing them w i t h guilt, s h o w i n g the collaboration between church and feudal landlords. T h e whirling top w i t h w h i c h Ernesto plays, his zumbayllu, becomes a symbol of the interconnection of all things in the movement, light, and song of N a t u r e . Ultimately, Ernesto remains an outsider, in a third, imagined space where the past and present of t w o races, t w o cultures, and a c o m p l e x system of social classes could meet. T h i s impasse is transcended only by N a t u r e and music, while the plague that scatters the students in the final pages of the novel is a reminder of the shared fragility of human beings. El sexto d r a w s on A r g u e d a s ' s o w n experience as a political prisoner during one year in a prison in L i m a . A student, Gabriel, listens to political speeches and to the squabbles between apristas and communists. T h e narrator does not become a true character and the prisoners appear schematic in this sordid w o r l d of naturalist coloring. In Todas las sangres, A r g u e d a s describes a t o w n , San Pedro, located in the southern mountain ranges of Peru. T h e old, harmonious lifestyle is crumbling under the combined influences of centralism, the collapse of the mining industry, and the weight of accumulated injustice. Indians w i t h their c o m m u n a l lands resist the landowners, represented by Bruno, and the o w n e r of the mine, Fermín, Bruno's brother, while these in turn are pushed aside by the nascent international capitalism of L i m a . T h i s lengthy novel s h o w s a plurality of w o r l d s in conflict, of inherited and new structures weighed d o w n by economic interests, in a changing society w i t h greater mobility and more options than the feudal society of regional agriculture and mining. T h e behavior of the t w o brothers is brutal and arrogant, reminiscent in tone of Valle Inclán's Comedias bárbaras. El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo w a s published posthumously and it exemplifies a dialectic of mountain/coast, Q u e c h u a / S p a n i s h , plus a kaleidoscope of political opinions in a debate that is less vivid than in his previous novels. T h e interpolated pages of his diary run from M a y 10, 1968, to O c t o b e r 2 2 , 1 9 6 9 , with m o v i n g considerations about suicide and stinging commentaries about other Spanish A m e r i c a n novelists. T h e conflict between different leaders in a fishermen's union is s h o w n , but not resolved. W h a t w o u l d seem an interruption of the narrative due only to A r g u e d a s ' s suicide is also a pessimistic break in the progress of a history stagnated in conflict between those a b o v e and those oppressed. T h e oppression of the Indians and the racism of the powerful landowners, doctors, lawyers - in small Peruvian t o w n s are vividly chronicled by M a n u e l Scorza (1928-1983) in Redoble por Raneas and Historia de Gar abombo, el invisible. Scorza's tendency to caricature and anecdote, his penchant for grotesque humor and heavy-handed parody 258 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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give to his novels a quality of agitprop dignified w i t h techniques learnt from R i c a r d o Palma, C i r o Alegría, Asturias, and G a r c í a M á r q u e z . T h e other side of the story, the privileged bourgeoisie caught in a white, European and N o r t h A m e r i c a n , dream, has been told by V a r g a s Llosa and by Alfredo Bryce Echenique (b. 1939). Bryce's Un mundo para Julius is dreamy and Proustian, less concerned about a story than w i t h the people, their secrets and favorite places. Julius will g r o w up to realize that the w o r l d he w a s promised does not exist, except as a consoling project, but as Bryce exposes the emptiness of this fabricated w o r l d , his ornate prose takes delight in reconstructing an era according to the insightful vision of a participant. In Argentina the main concern of the period is the unstable and conflictive nature of a society divided between the old money and the mass of immigrants, between the powerful and the dispossessed, and novels tend either to be concerned w i t h describing the apocalyptic condition of the country or to escape into a refined seclusion. Peronists and the army or police r o a m from novel to novel, but there is no agreement about h o w they should be judged. A m o n g the w e l l - k n o w n writers w h o long for order and high culture one finds M a n u e l G á l v e z , E d u a r d o M a l l e a , José B i a n c o , M a n u e l M u j i c a Lainez, Ernesto Sàbato, Héctor A . M u r e n a , Silvina Bullrich, and Beatriz G u i d o . M a n u e l G á l v e z (1882-1962), published Las dos vidas del pobre Napoleón, a light-hearted story about the transformation of a humble employee into a gambler and an embezzler, as he seeks to imitate the literary portrait of him created by a friend. H e also published several historical novels, Tiempo de odio y angustia, Han tocado a degüello, Bajo la garra anglo-francesa, and Y así cayó don Juan Manuel, in w h i c h he defends R o s a s ' s dictatorship. El uno y la multitud describes life in Buenos Aires during the Second W o r l d W a r , Tránsito Guzman is an anti-Peronist novel concentrating on the m o b attack on June 16, 1955, against properties of the C a t h o l i c church. Perdido en su noche is about a Jesuit priest and the crisis of his v o c a t i o n . Me mataron entre todos tells the story of a man w h o can read other people's minds, and La locura de ser santo, published posthumously, is another of his C a t h o l i c novels. G á l v e z is a l w a y s a g o o d narrator and his novels are well structured, but his Naturalism and his ideological conservatism were increasingly removed from the mainstream. E d u a r d o M a l l e a (b. 1903), the editor from 1931 to 1955 of the literary supplement of Argentina's leading newspaper, La Nación, became wellk n o w n for his essay Historia de una pasión argentina (1937) [History of an Argentine Passion], and his early novels, a m o n g them La bahía del silencio (1940), but he is a prolific writer w h o published many novels in the 259 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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period 1950 to 1975. Los enemigos del alma tells the story of a brother and his t w o sisters, trapped in a conflictive relationship with each other. T h i s novel is discursive and mannered, but provides a detailed portrait of M a l l e a ' s native city, Bahía Blanca. In 1951 he published La torre, the second v o l u m e of a trilogy that had begun w i t h Las águilas (1943). La torre focuses on the decline of the Ricarte family, exemplified by the hesitations and failures of a y o u n g l a w y e r w h o searches for the truth of his country and for his true self in the countryside. M a l l e a ' s stilted style and repetitive characters - the troubled man, the archetypical outsider, the dominant or enslaved w o m a n , the jealous man, the bitter marriage — and the intellectual, detached, c o o l narrator, w e a k e n his other novels of this period: Chaves, La sala de espera, and Simbad, a long novel about a writer's career. T h r e e short novels or long stories are included in Posesión, w h e r e " L o s z a p a t o s " s h o w s an uncharacteristic and successful black humor. El resentimiento is a triptych of three novels (Los ensimis mados, El resentimiento, and La falacia), where M a l l e a ' s prologue sums up his wish to distance himself from the w o r l d and place himself in the unpopular category of a narrator of ideas. La barca de hielo is a collection of stories loosely strung together by the same narrator, while La penúl tima puerta introduces themes from India. Gabriel Andaral is a static portrait of the musings of an Argentinian homme de lettres. M a l l e a portrays, often unintentionally, the exhausted ideology of a Frenchoriented intelligentsia. His vigor lies more in the essay than in the novel, as proven by La vida blanca, written in the early 1940s, and published w i t h a m o v i n g prologue and epilogue from i960, w h e r e M a l l e a laments the passing of a proud Argentina and the collapse of the dreams of a leading and cultured - rich and refined - upper class. T h e modernist divide between valued aristocratic art - mostly Euro pean - and popular expression - mostly local, disruptive, degraded, and superficial - is brilliantly defended in La pérdida del reino by José Bianco (1908-1986). Bianco w a s the editor of Sur from 1938 to 1 9 6 1 , filtering for the Spanish A m e r i c a n public the latest and most refined European trends. A prolific essayist, his sparse narrative started brilliantly w i t h t w o short novels, Sombras suele vestir (1941), and Las ratas (1943). Bianco describes interpersonal relations w i t h unusual lucidity, exploring w i t h restrained fascination situations where the smoothness of civilized society gives w a y to sickness, perversion, madness, and suicide. La pérdida del reino is divided into t w o sections of unequal length. T h e first and shorter one is told from the point of view of an editor w h o meets Rufino V e l a z q u e z , an essayist w h o has spent several years in Europe and has recently returned to Buenos Aires to die surrounded by his faithful aristocratic friends. V e l a z q u e z hands over to the editor the manuscripts of an autobiographi cal novel and a plethora of documents, from w h i c h the second part of La z6o


The Spanish American novel: 1950-1975 pérdida del reino reconstructs V e l a z q u e z ' s life. T h e care with w h i c h Bianco distances writing from truth, his distrust of language in the effort to distill the essence of experience, the enigmatic nature of m e m o r y and passion, the gingerly treated homoeroticism are all factors that m a k e this novel reminiscent of G i d e , Durrell, M a u r i a c , and Sartre, while at the same time anticipating some of the metafictional preoccupations of a later period. T h e portrait of the threatened upper crust of the Argentinian intelligentsia is melancholic and unflattering. V e l a z q u e z drifts in and out of an idle life w i t h o u t being able to leave behind his family, especially the double inheritance of his father: money and prestige, on the one hand, the shady m e m o r y of a murder, on the other. T h e seamy side of the elite is thus brought sharply into focus, yet Bianco does not denounce this decadent aristocracy, but more laments the passing of a k i n g d o m of elegant grandeur. Less discursive than M a l l e a , not as profound as M u r e n a , M a n u e l Mujica Lainez (1910-1984) belongs also to a group of Argentinian intellectuals marked by the nostalgia of Europe and mesmerized by the fading grandeur of the landed aristocracy. A s a journalist for La Nación from 1932 until his retirement in 1969, he w a s well informed and widely read, receiving many honors for his essays, novels, and translations. His novels from 1950 to 1975 are finely crafted and thoroughly researched, and most are entertaining, but they seldom transcend Mujica Lainez's love of the ornamental, the gossipy, and the titillating. Los ídolos is a restrained account of the falsity behind the facade of a famous poet and an aristocratic family. La casa and Los viajeros are flawed by an artificial narrator - the house - and a diffuse story, respectively. Invitados en "El Paraíso" chronicles the sexual excesses of the rich and the bohemian. His best-known novel, Bomarzo [Bomarzo] lovingly recreates the Italian Renaissance. El unicornio [The Wandering Unicorn] and El laberinto are also historical novels, the first one about the M i d d l e A g e s , and the second about one of El G r e c o ' s models, a friend of L o p e de V e g a , and their times. De milagros y de melancolías is a pseudo-history of the Southern C o n e of Latin A m e r i c a , from the C o n q u e s t to the year 3000, a parody of the style of historians and popular myths, and an acerbic criticism of Perón. Ultimately, Mujica Lainez is t o o refined and civilized, too erudite, to a l l o w the novels to take off with true narrative vigor. It is only in a m o v i n g portrait of the Emperor Heliogabalus, sneaked into an autobiographical novel, Cec//, that Mujica Lainez a l l o w s his fascination w i t h excess and exquisite perversion to surface, but in El viaje de los siete demonios, a lively and funny novel, he undercuts sin by reducing the devils to travelling salesmen. T h e philosophical essay is only thinly disguised w i t h a novelistic argument in the novels of Ernesto Sábato (b. 1 9 1 1 ) . Sobre héroes y tumbas #



LITERATURE

[On Heroes and Tombs] tells a mystifying love story, w i t h a disconcerted angry y o u n g m a n and a frantic and erratic w o m a n w h o descends from an illustrious family n o w in economic, physical, and mental decadence. A counterpoint w i t h heroic events o f the past century, and the b a c k g r o u n d of the popular unrest o f the 1950s provide depth to a w o r l d o f uncontrollable violence and insidious madness. T h e novel incorporates a chilling report, prepared by o n e o f the characters w h o claims to have discovered the blind have a secret and powerful organization. T h i s paranoid parable can easily be translated into a somber meditation o n the leaders o f our civilization, their limited vision o f the future, and their brutal means o f defending their privileges. In Abaddon el exterminador, brief episodes and long discussions o n literature, politics, art, and literary criticism offer an apocalyptic interpretation o f the present. O n e o f the characters is a writer named Sábato, and the characters o f his previous novels, critics, journalists, and friends surround him w i t h a maddening babble that distracts h i m from the important tasks o f writing and denouncing the repressive violence o f the establishment. Silvina Bullrich (b. 1915) has an accessible prose that gained her popular success if not critical acclaim. O f the m a n y novels she w r o t e during this period, n o t e w o r t h y are Bodas de cristal, w i t h a one-sided but m o v i n g portrait o f a marriage, and Los burgueses, depicting a family dinner that becomes an exhilarating occasion for gossip. A n illustrative e x a m p l e of the change, in the period 1 9 5 0 - 1 9 7 5 , from the preoccupation w i t h society and ideas to narration and language is provided by H é c t o r A . M u r e n a ( 1 9 2 3 - 1 9 7 5 ) , w h o s e early career is marked by his participation in Sur and La Nation, that is, organs associated w i t h an elitist and refined Argentinian oligarchy. His influential essays, notably El pecado original de América (1954), supplied concepts such as parricide, widely used by his and the following generation o f Argentinian intellectuals to describe their conflict w i t h their precursors. H i s novels are grouped into t w o trilogies, the first o n e w i t h a strong existentialist m o o d that o w e s m u c h to Sartre and Beckett. La fatalidad de los cuerpos describes the lonely existence o f a bed-ridden industrialist w h o sees w i t h impotence his w o r l d collapse around him, Las leyes de la noche (The Laws of the Night) is the depressing and brutal story o f the industrialist's lover, and Los herederos de la promesa centers o n the bohemian life o f the industrialist's daughter and her lover. T h e vision o f Argentina that emerges from these novels s h o w s her w i t h an aimless and w e a k leadership threatened by moral disintegration and the violence of the immigrants and the p o o r . T h e heirs to the promises o f Sarmiento and the liberal, progressoriented nineteenth century are mired in a shattered dream reflected in the void and pessimism o f existentialist rhetoric. M u r e n a ' s second trilogy, El sueño de la razón, proves that he kept abreast o f the n e w trends, since his 262 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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language becomes innovative and is brought to the fore by ingenious narrators, one of them a story-teller. Epitalámica follows the grotesque but amusing adventures of a moronic heir to a large fortune made from selling tainted food products, Polispuercón brings the arrogant and exploitative society depicted in the previous v o l u m e to an end in an outrageous dictatorship, while Caína muerte is a parable of the rise of a populist movement, probably of Peronism. D o g s and cats take over and humans obey them, becoming their lovers, while civilization flounders. M u r e n a ' s pessimism and his contempt for middle-class values m a k e of both trilogies somber statements of rejection, but the second trilogy is tempered by the playfulness of the language and the intelligence of the grotesque satire. M u r e n a ' s estrangement in his later years from the Argentinian intellectual mainstream prevented his last novels, a m o n g them the posthumously published Folisofia, from receiving the attention they merit. Beatriz G u i d o (1925-1988) w o n the Emecé Prize in 1954 with La casa del ángel [The House of the Angel], the memoirs of a y o u n g w o m a n w h o has g r o w n up in the stifling atmosphere of a rich and conservative household. T h e dramatic incidents - a duel and a rape - make visible the conflicting society into w h i c h she must g r o w , unprepared for the struggles of sex, class, and politics. In La caída, an eighteen-year-old, Albertina, arrives in Buenos Aires to study literature at the university. She is slowly d r a w n into the life o f a peculiar family, daring to replace the mother and falling into a suffocated and voiceless stupor. T h i s striking novel gives a g o o d account of the obstacles to independence for a y o u n g intellectual w o m a n . Fin de fiesta is a conventional novel about a rural chieftain and his family. T h e case of a w o m a n incarcerated by her family in her o w n house and not a l l o w e d to live her o w n life is beautifully handled in the short novel La mano en la trampa. El incendio y las vísperas [End of a Day] s h o w s a very rich and decadent family threatened by Peronist m o b s . From the breakfast in the kitchen - the servants are on strike - to the loss of the family farm and the fire at the Jockey C l u b , the security of the family is eroded by the evil and ugly populace. M a n y readers, even those w h o condemn the populist dictatorship of Perón, may find it hard to sympath ize w i t h the sufferings o f these characters w h o lead such useless lives a m o n g so much wealth and flirt w i t h the w o r k i n g classes only to have sex or to protect their properties. Escándalos y soledades is not altogether successful in describing the life of an eccentric family, all males, intercalat ing documents about the death of T r o t s k y and the life of his murderer. O n the Peronist side and w i t h corrosive humor, L e o p o l d o M a r e c h a l (1900-1970) offers a brilliant e x a m p l e of h o w profound ideas can be presented in a captivating w a y in El banquete de Severo Arcángelo. W i t h a talent for the unexpected turn of phrase that cuts d o w n the flights of 263 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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metaphysical thought w i t h o u t trivializing, M a r é c h a l presents enigmatically the preparations for a ritual banquet prepared by a rich Buenos Aires industrialist. T h e main narrator, a journalist, is in turn seduced and repelled by the series of transcendental symbols w i t h w h i c h he is confronted. W h i l e the novel o w e s much to mystery and adventure novels (Salgari is quoted w i t h reverence), and the language is reminiscent of Borges, the m a d c a p frenzy of the action and the depth of the ideas presented are vintage M a r é c h a l . Megafón, o la guerra is an ambitious novel that passes judgment on Argentinian history and finds it lacking of true martial vigor, commenting negatively on the generals w h o exiled Perón. Part of Megafón is a melancholic return to the places described in M a r e c h a l ' s earlier novel Adán Buenosayres (1948). T h e final chapters are similar to El banquete, w i t h the purification and dismemberment of the mythical hero, but Megafón is episodic, disjointed, and sermonizing, more in the line of Q u e v e d o ' s dreams than a traditional novel. M a r e c h a l ' s odd mixture of M e d i e v a l C a t h o l i c i s m , G r e e k m y t h o l o g y , and H o m e r i c epic patterns, suffused by irreverent h u m o r and irony, make him an original and unique writer. T o express a concern for social injustice and the repression of the p o o r , and to denounce the escapist refinement of the writers associated with the journal Sur, several y o u n g writers founded Contorno, published from 1953 to 1959. O n e of its founding editors, D a v i d V i ñ a s (b. 1929), is also the best k n o w n novelist of this g r o u p . O f his first novels, Cayó sobre su rostro, Los años despiadados, Un dios cotidiano, and Los dueños de la tierra, this last one is the best balanced, describing the failed attempts of a Buenos Aires bureaucrat to mediate in a conflict in Patagonia that ends in a massacre. V i ñ a s occasionally reads more as a chronicler than a novelist, and his characters are mostly useful props to tell the story of a period. His sympathies are w i t h the underdog, and there are in his w o r k conflictive and compassionate accounts of the repression of w o r k e r s , h o m o s e x u a l s , Jews, and w o m e n . Dar la cara contains a satire of Sur (called La revista in the novel), and of the Argentinian film industry in the 1950s. Los hombres de a caballo is V i ñ a s ' s most ambitious novel, offering a convincing family portrait of the military and their obsession w i t h p o w e r , sex, and fraternity. T h e intricate n e t w o r k of flashbacks and juxtaposed episodes are more cinematographic than baroque, and a l l o w V i ñ a s to create characters w i t h psychological depth by presenting several generations of army men and s h o w i n g their importance in Argentinian history. Cosas concretas is a bizarre interview of a writer, interspersed w i t h m o n o l o g u e s and episodes that t h r o w light on his frustrated career. Jauría, despite its c o m p l e x structure, is the old story of gunmen and the powerful O l d M a n , more entertaining than revealing. For the period studied in this chapter, Los hombres de a caballo is a major accomplishment, surely a m o n g the 264 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950-1975 best studies of military p s y c h o l o g y in Spanish A m e r i c a and an absorbing, profound, and technically accomplished novel. A m o n g popular writers, M a r t a L y n c h (1930-1985) outlines important political and social problems of Argentina in her novels. In La alfombra roja, she follows the unscrupulous surge to p o w e r of a presidential candidate. H e r descriptions of the process are detailed and k n o w l e d g e able, in part because she had occupied - next to D a v i d V i ñ a s and N o é Jitrik, a m o n g others - an important position in the presidential candidacy of A r t u r o Frondizi, between 1956 and 1958. Al vencedor looks at the problem of a lost generation, focusing on t w o men recently discharged from the army. La señora Ordóñez describes the life of the bored wife of a doctor, and Un árbol lleno de manzanas observes the student unrest of 1972 and the generation g a p . A m o n g novels that reported about being a w o m a n in a male-dominated society, Las ceremonias del verano, by M a r t a T r a b a (1930—1984), is a passionate portrait of an intellectual struggling to assert her o w n self, first in Argentina and then in Europe. T h e novel does not have a strong narrative structure, but is more a series of w e l l - d r a w n vignettes. Luisa Valenzuela (b. 1938) s h o w e d her superior craftsmanship and intelligence from her very first novel, Hay que sonreír, on the surface a picaresque novel about a prostitute in Buenos Aires, her subsequent marriage and w o r k in a circus, but on a deeper level a serious consideration of the condition of w o m e n as a b o d y for sale or as a severed, smiling head, the w h o r e or the virgin. In El gato eficaz she looks at the relationship between w o m e n , cats, and discourse, m o v i n g to the daring and experimental prose that will become her trademark in later w o r k s . M o v i n g progressively from a lyrical description of the humbler neighb o r h o o d s of Buenos Aires to an o p a q u e and lyrical prose, Néstor Sánchez (b. 1935) published Nosotros dos, Siberia Blues, El amhor, los orsinis y la muerte, and Cómico de la lengua. T h e first t w o novels, his most successful, modulate m e m o r y and m o o d in variations that can be compared to the improvisations of a jazz player melancholically reminiscing about a broken marriage or a g r o u p of friends involved in petty crime. A unique vision of Argentina is found in the novels of H a r o l d o C o n t i (b. 1925), w h o describes the rough life of outsiders with the celebration of independence found in H e m i n g w a y and K e r o u a c and a morosity reminiscent of Faulkner and Pavese. Sudeste concentrates on fishermen and hunters; Alrededor de la jaula follows a boy in his lonely life in Buenos Aires and in his attempt to free his favorite animal from the z o o ; En vida alternates between the w e e k l y routine of Buenos Aires y o u n g bureaucrats and the w e e k e n d escapes to the seashore; Mascará, el cazador americano focuses on a circus that becomes the arena in w h i c h the protagonist must find his true self. T h e s e novels are strong in atmosphere and w e a k in 265 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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action, as if the influence of Fellini and A n t o n i o n i had magnified the image and the noun at the expense of tension and verbs. T h e w o r l d of the provinces is recreated in Aire tan dulce, by Elvira O r p h e e (b. 1930). Focusing on three characters w h o alternate their m o n o l o g u e s , the novel looks at the resentment of a p o o r and violent y o u n g man, the loves of a y o u n g w o m a n , and the frustrated life of her grandmother. T h e atmosphere is oppressive and the characters live in an isolation paradoxically aggravated by the rumor mill and the reciprocal surveillance of the bored inhabitants of a small city. A rush of brief sentences, a frenzied and at times confusing action, hatred, and a failure to communicate - especially between the sexes - lead to a violent c l i m a x . O r p h e e does not describe with any detail the physical appearance of her characters or the t o w n , but concentrates instead on the voices and feelings of her characters. She also published in this period the novels Uno and En el fondo. M a r c o Denevi (b. 1922) skillfully combined suspense, perspectivism, reflections on fiction and reality, and a brilliant evocation of different patterns of speech in Rosaura a las diez [Rosa at Ten O'clock]. T h e novel offers four versions of puzzling events that lead to murder, and a letter by the victim where she explains the mystery. Denevi's delight in language and narration is an antecedent of M a n u e l Puig's novels and a reminder of the effectiveness of the traditional detective story in conveying effortlessly the portrait of a segment of society. M a n u e l Puig (1933-1990) established himself from his first novel, La traicion de Rita Hay worth [Betrayed by Rita Hay worth], as an original and innovative writer. His portrayal of Argentina's provincial middle class is especially effective because of Puig's k n a c k for recreating dialogue and the voices of w o m e n and children, incorporating elements of popular culture, such as soap operas, film, and colloquial language. T h e voices on the telephone, pages of personal journals, letters, school reports, and interior m o n o l o g u e s that proliferate in La traicion s h o w the shallowness of life and the gap between expectations fueled by the silver screen and the routines of daily life. Puig s h o w s his characters with affection and understanding, but not w i t h o u t a marked irony that invites readers to smile at the pretentiousness and shortsightedness of these modest lives, trivial even to themselves, yet touched by the redeeming grace of c a m p and kitsch. Boquitas pintadas [Heartbreak Tango] reconstructs, through the juxtaposition of letters, police reports, dialogues, log b o o k s , and other scraps of writing, the life of a small-town seducer. T h e focus is not on him, a vain and irresponsible character w h o dies of tuberculosis, but on the w o m e n w h o love him and hate each other in an intricate and suffocating n e t w o r k of actions, gossip, and memories. T h e texts seem to c o m e directly from the heart of the characters, a heart overflowing w i t h z66


The Spanish American novel: 1950-19-75 affection and sexual longing but mired in cliches and deception. Puig does a w a y w i t h the traditional narrator, elegant and k n o w i n g , and seems to step aside to let the reader gauge the depths of the irony w i t h w h i c h these texts are passed on, a l l o w i n g a w i d e range of possible readings, from condescending to earnest and compassionate. The Buenos Aires Affair, subtitled " N o v e l a p o l i c i a l , " reports w i t h a quirky prose the story of t w o frustrated lovers. W h i l e the story line may not compete w i t h the novels of Dashiell H a m m e t t or R o s s M a c d o n a l d , Puig's verbal dexterity is a l w a y s dazzling, as can be seen, for e x a m p l e , in the mangled and syncopated language of the recording of a conversation between an informer and the police. In U r u g u a y , the dream of a progressive, prosperous, civil republic - the Switzerland of Spanish A m e r i c a - is shattered during this period, as economic pressures mount and violence destroys the peaceful social equilibrium established at the beginning of the century. Juan C a r l o s Onetti (1909-1994) is a masterful creator of a novelistic w o r l d marked by a g l o o m y m o o d and outsider characters trapped in enigmatic circumstances where truth and fiction are hard to disentangle. Onetti's impeccable and terse prose is stretched to the limits of lyricism and obscurity, w i t h o u t ever losing a Naturalistic grounding and more than enough suspense to keep the reader's interest. H e brings together in a most effective m i x the desolate vision of the w o r l d of Kafka and Sartre, Faulkner's poetic perspectivism, and the deadpan cynicism of the A m e r i can hard-boiled detective novels. La vida breve [A Brief Life] starts from the situation of Brausen, an employee at a publicity agency in Buenos Aires, w h o s e wife has recently lost a breast because of a mastectomy. T h e loss is symbolic of falling out of love and of a lack of interest in the routine of his life. Brausen fills in the g r o w i n g and threatening v a c u u m by dreaming up t w o alternative lives. O n e is played out w i t h a prostitute w h o moves in next d o o r to his apartment, w h o s e life he reconstructs from the voices and noise c o m i n g through the w a l l of his b e d r o o m . Brausen becomes A r c e for her, a violent tough w h o avenges in her submission, beating, and ultimate murder the irritating independence of Brausen's wife. A l s o , Brausen fills his hand, orphaned of the motherly breast, with a pen, and tries to write the script of a m o v i e that takes place in Santa M a r i a , a mythic blending of M o n t e v i d e o and Buenos Aires where most of Onetti's characters live. Here, an aggressive and distant w o m a n reduces the man, a doctor, to a provider of morphine - pleasure and dreams - and a servant, but does not a l l o w him any access to her intimacy. T h e s m o o t h transitions from one story line to the other, the d o w n p l a y i n g of s y m b o l ism and the understated reporting of events, riddled w i t h gaps and unexplained events, are most effective and s h o w Onetti at his best. Los 267 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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adioses has several people guessing at and thereby inventing the life of a laconic and reclusive patient being treated for tuberculosis in a mountain sanitarium and visited there by t w o w o m e n . T h e scandal of the unnamed patient is more his obstinate secret than his suspected double life. W h i l e some versions are proven to be w r o n g by the end of this short, beautiful, and very c o m p l e x novel, the mystery of the man's deeper motivations does not subside. Vara una tumba sin nombre takes readers again to Santa M a r i a , where an unusual burial is variously explained by three of the participants. N o t even the name of the dead w o m a n can be ascertained, plunging characters into a darkness that is contemplated w i t h tolerance and even some pleasure for the play it a l l o w s to the creative imagination. La cara de la desgracia, Tan triste como ella, and La muerte y la nina offer three cases where a w o m a n dies, murdered by men, or driven to suicide by an unconcerned husband. T h a t in these three short narrations death is the price w o m e n pay for their rebellion and independence does point out the problematic and unhappy situation of w o m e n in Onetti's w o r l d , where violence appears sometimes as a manly and seductive shortcut to the mature relationship that the characters are unable to establish normally. Onetti's masterpiece is El astillero [The Shipyard], the story of Larsen, a pimp w h o clings to the dream of becoming the C E O of a bankrupt and ruined shipyard, while trying to marry the dim-witted daughter of the o w n e r . Larson's salaries g o unpaid, his only employees are t w o plunderers of the remaining carcass of the shipyard, and his w o r k consists of reviewing outdated files. El astillero can be read as a parable of the frail foundations of the U r u g u a y a n and Argentinian economies, of the aimless and exploited w o r k e r s , of the infinite capacity for self-deception and dream that sustains h u m a n beings in a time of crisis, or even as a prophetic statement about the collapse of the affluent society in Uruguay and Argentina. H o w e v e r , it is first an unforgettable and haunting story splendidly told. T h e antecedents of Larsen's life are given in juntacaddveres, where Larsen, as an entrepreneur, brings the first brothel to Santa M a r i a , unleashing the ire of the priest and the conservative forces in t o w n . T h e alternation of first- and third-person narration, the conflict between the t o w n and the outsiders, the wasted effort and the suicide of a sexually aggressive w o m a n , s h o w again in Juntacaddveres that in Onetti's w o r l d there is no success possible within or w i t h o u t the established norms, except in a detached and amused cynicism that does not exclude a love resigned to the insignificance of human beings and the corrosive swiftness of time. A minor masterpiece is La tregua [The Truce], by M a r i o Benedetti (b. 1920), a perceptive portrait of the brief moment of happiness in the life of a U r u g u a y a n accountant planning to retire. Narrated as a first-person diary, this novel courageously risks being sentimental to tell its love story. 268 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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W i t h a restrained prose, Benedetti convincingly explores the relationships of w o r k , family, friendship, and love, intimating that the missing political dimension is w h a t d o o m s the main character to his final solitude. H e also published in this period Quién de nosotros and Gracias por el fuego. Cristina Peri Rossi (b. 1941) gives a poetic and forceful account in El libro de mis primos of the disintegration of a vast family, symbolic of the collapse of her o w n country that t o o k her into exile in Spain in 1972. Her lively, playful, and original text mixes prose and verse to describe the w o r l d of the family elders (hiding from the w o r l d , leaving newspapers unread), a y o u n g man w h o has joined the guerrillas, and the children w h o imitate the conflictive w o r l d of the g r o w n - u p s . M e m o r a b l e chapters include the visit to the doctor of a b o y w h o cries t o o m u c h , and the surgical rape of a doll. A u g u s t o R o a Bastos (b. 1917) has created in his many short stories and t w o novels a monumental, c o m p l e x , interrelated, and vast w o r l d . W i t h a rich, experimental language he rewrites the history of his native land, Paraguay. W h i l e R o a Bastos's description of the violence, injustice, and repression of the colonial society of Spanish A m e r i c a has many antecedents, his masterful interweaving of European and G u a r a n í myths, the depth and openness of his analysis, and the diversity and richness of his literary craft have assured him a position a m o n g the best narrators of Spanish A m e r i c a . Hijo de hombre [Son of Man] has nine chapters, five of them narrated by M i g u e l V e r a , a veteran of the w a r against Bolivia in C h a c o , and four chapters narrated by w h a t seems to be the voice of tradition. V e r a ' s sympathies are w i t h the oppressed - the h u m a n being crucified by other h u m a n beings - yet he is still serving the oppressors and sheltered in his o w n self. A final report says that V e r a w a s horrified by suffering, but k n e w not w h a t to d o about it. R o a ' s novel, by etching the parallel between the life and Passion of Christ and the rebel peasants' leader Cristóbal Jara, is a call to compassion and action, a rejection of uncommitted observers, the M i g u e l V e r a s w h o end up being unwitting accomplices to a situation they detest. T h e symphonic structure of Hijo de hombre, w i t h its apparently independent chapters, proves that time past and present, the individual and society, and peace and w a r are deeply interrelated, inevitably contaminating the space of the so-called detached observer — V e r a or the reader. R o a ' s second novel, Y o el Supremo [I the Supreme], has been considered his masterpiece, and it takes its place alongside other already classic descriptions of Latin A m e r i c a n dictators, the Spaniard R a m ó n M a r í a del Valle Inclán's Tirano Banderas, M i g u e l Á n g e l Asturias's El Señor Presidente, Alejo Carpentier's El recurso del método, and Gabriel G a r c í a M á r q u e z ' s El otoño del patriarca. T h e main difference w i t h those 269 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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other novels is that while they are loosely based on historical facts, their dictator being a composite of several w e l l - k n o w n historical villains, R o a ' s novel closely follows in its story the life of P a r a g u a y ' s D r . Francia, w h o led the country from 1814 until his death in 1840. Y o el Supremo presents itself as the compilation by a twentieth-century narrator of a large a m o u n t of material about Francia and his period. T h e narrator adopts from time to time the historian's style of footnotes and the sifting of contradictory evidence. A pretense reminiscent of Cervantes's Don Quixote complicates the reliability of the narrative: most of the text pretends to be dictated by Francia himself to his secretary Patifio, w h o in turn is given to changing a sentence to suit his o w n convenience. T h e compiler, Francia, and Patifio, plus the voices quoted from historical documents, struggle in vain to impose one version of the events, to resolve all ambiguities and to arrive at a conclusion, a verdict about Francia's government. Francia delights in puns and e t y m o l o g y , s h o w s himself as a sophisticated and resourceful speaker, sends fatherly and clever "perpetual m e m o s , " and s h o w s an excellent grasp of Paraguayan history. W h i l e R o a has declared that he w a s not interested in writing a novel that w o u l d follow history in every detail, he has stayed close enough to m a k e the text tantalizing. T h e reader w h o is encouraged to turn to history to complement Francia's portrait, will find that "the S u p r e m e " has been the subject of both encomiastic and denigrating biographies, and that even the most trivial documents are suspect in a country where history has been written and rewritten incessantly under the guidance and scrutiny of harsh dictatorships. Since the novel insists on the unreliable nature of all writing, on the supreme p o w e r of the author, the discrepancies introduced by R o a confirm that readers must practice an active and questioning reading, never lulled by the false promise of veracity from historians or narrators. Despite the concluding summation of the compiler, where he deplores Francia's big w o r d s , fraudulent rhetoric, perverse ambition, and pride, Francia has g r o w n through the novel to be a brilliant and enduring character, in the same category as Sarmiento's F a c u n d o Q u i r o g a or R o m u l o G a l l e g o s ' s D o n a Barbara. In Chile, E d u a r d o Barrios (1884-1963) published Los hombres del hombre, an introspective study of a jealous m a n w h o feels divided into seven voices that reflect different aspects of his personality. H o w e v e r , the younger Chilean writers, m o v i n g fast into a period of great social transformation and political unrest, are mostly interested in telling the story of their society, and not the sufferings of a single individual. M a r t a Brunet (1897-1967), also an established writer from previous decades like Barrios, published Maria Nadie, in the first section of w h i c h she creates the image of a burgeoning frontier t o w n , while the second part 270 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950-1975 of the novel focuses on M a r í a L ó p e z , a professional and independent w o m a n w h o is rejected by the t o w n . W h i l e Brunet is to be c o m m e n d e d for her open and courageous treatment of the repression of w o m e n in Chilean society and for her pathbreaking openness about sex, her traditional narration and pat psychological portraits limit the effectiveness of her novels. In Amasijo, she explains the h o m o s e x u a l tendencies of the protagonist and his eventual suicide as the consequences of a dominant mother's influence. W h i l e her dialogues ring true and her description of nature and m o o d is convincing, she does not escape the stereotypes of criollista literature, such as the evil and idle rich, the g o o d prostitute, the exotic foreigners, and the caricature of the l o w e r middle class. Brunet's tendency to explain her characters' actions w i t h a clinical neatness conspires to further dilute her characters. T h e main writer of this period in Chile is José D o n o s o (b. 1924), w h o describes in his novels the fragile and decadent upper crust of Chilean society, threatened by the mimicry of the middle class and the anger and resentment of w o r k e r s and the p o o r . T h e subtle complexity of his characters and a language that is at once richly local and elegantly transparent characterize D o n o s o ' s writing. Coronation [Coronation] follows the spineless and idle Andrés during his visits to his grandmother's house, where a n e w maid a w a k e n s his sexual urge, driving him to tepid passion, failed action, and feigned madness. T h e interdependence of masters and servants is brought into sharp relief as the shelter of the ancestral h o m e opens to a vast city of need and violence, masterfully evoked w i t h straightforward language. By leaving aside tiresome descrip tions, stereotypic confrontations, and pathetic calls to the reader's allegiance, D o n o s o short-circuited decades of social realism and estab lished himself as one of the most important voices of the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel. Este domingo [This Sunday] combines three story lines. T h e first offers the point of view of the narrator as a child, visiting his grandparents' house on Sundays and vainly trying to understand the g r o w n - u p s , while engaged in the labyrinths created by children's imagination. T h e second outlines the story of the grandfather, w h o has remained fixed in his love affair w i t h the maid he had as a y o u n g man and is n o w concerned w i t h a suspected cancer. T h e third, and most developed, is the story of the grandmother w h o , unsatisfied w i t h her marriage, has found refuge in social w o r k . She visits a prisoner in jail and helps him establish himself after he is set free, yet the relationship is fraught on both sides w i t h the repression of their feelings caused by the difference in their social class. T h e tragic ending is narrated w i t h o u t any stridency, underscoring the senseless waste of these aimless characters. In El lugar sin límites [Hell Hath No Limits], a transvestite and his 271 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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daughter are the o w n e r s of a rural brothel w i t h a dwindling clientele. T h e y are threatened on the one side by the local landowner, w h o w a n t s to buy the land where the brothel stands, and on the other by a truck-driver w h o is a violent repressed h o m o s e x u a l and probably the illegitimate son of the landowner. T h e o m i n o u s vigil for the truck-driver's return and the symbol-laden closing scenes are rescued by the portrait of L a M a n u e l a , an aging man w h o is transfigured w h e n he dances in his red dress and brings illusion to a wasted countryside. D o n o s o ' s b e s t - k n o w n novel, El obsceno pdjaro de la noche [The Obscene Bird of Night], is extremely c o m p l e x , shifting points of view and narrators, m a k i n g it impossible to pin d o w n an objective truth. W h i l e a g r o u p of nuns, old w o m e n , orphans, and their manservant, in a rambling and vast building w h i c h is about to be demolished, a w a i t their transfer to a new hospice, an avalanche of voices, memories, documents, and a b u z z of legends, gossip, g a m e s , songs, and dialogues spin the story of the monstrous son of a rich landowner. T h e man w h o used to be his secretary and w h o wished to emulate him, has n o w been reduced to a deaf-mute servant of the old, retired maids and to a doll for the orphans. A c c o r d i n g to his memories, w h e n the monstrous son w a s born, his father created for him an environment where deformity became the norm and the real w o r l d w a s hidden behind the tall w a l l s of their farm's gardens. T h e novel lends itself to allegorical interpretations - the Chilean landed aristocracy's obstinate refusal to change and to recognize their a n o m a l o u s standing in recent history - but is most powerful in exploring the role of imagination in p o w e r and sex. T h e secretary's fascination w i t h his rich employer, his desire to substitute him in his wife's bed, and the l a n d o w n e r ' s envy of the fertility and sexual p r o w e s s of his subordinates are only some threads of a tapestry of frustration, where hiding, w r a p p i n g up, storing a w a y , canni balizing truth, or deflecting it into myth are unable to contain the destructive forces of truth, old age, and history. Jorge E d w a r d s (b. 1931) also describes the upper middle class and follows in El peso de la noche the path of an uncle and his nephew, the former in progressive decadence resulting from his alcoholism, the latter still in school discovering sex and heterodoxy. E d w a r d s ' s description of the Chilean bourgeoisie is scathing, w i t h an insider's k n o w l e d g e and a g o o d ear for dialogue. Enrique Lafourcade (b. 1927) writes popular novels w i t h tantalizing glimpses of the life of the very rich and the very p o o r described w i t h existentialist and religious undertones. His best novel is La fiesta del rey Ahab [King Ahab's Feast], a script-like and agile narration of the last day of a dictator reminiscent of Trujillo. O t h e r interesting novels by Lafour cade in this period are Para subir al cielo, w h i c h includes a g o o d 272



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description of night life in V a l p a r a i s o , spoilt by a melodramatic story line, and El príncipe y las ovejas. T h e w o r k i n g class finds a voice in a notable novel of the early part of this period, Hijo de ladrón [Born Guilty], by M a n u e l Rojas (1896-1973). W i t h a straightforward style and a realist o u t l o o k , but with a controlled lyricism and several effective flashbacks, he tells in the autobiographical mode the story of an adolescent forced to strike out on his o w n w h e n his father is t h r o w n into prison. T h e travels from Buenos Aires to V a l p a r a i s o , life in jail, and the solidarity of the p o o r are described w i t h h u m o r and compassion. Rojas is an effective storyteller w h o k n o w s from within the language of his characters, the refuse of society, the w o r k i n g p o o r , the migrant w o r k e r s . His later novels e x p a n d on this same g r o u p of char acters, concentrating on their sex life in Mejor que el vino, the contrast w i t h the oligarchy in Punta de rieles, and political struggles in Sombras contra el muro. Rojas's majestic last novel, La oscura vida radiante, is an epic but poetic and lively portrait of Chilean w o r k e r s , anarchists, drifters, and many other characters given life by Rojas's delight in the telling anecdote and the memorable detail. T h e darker side of society, the p o o r , lonely, violent, drunk, is explored in the novels of C a r l o s D r o g u e t t (b. 1915). His best k n o w n novel is Eloy, the story of the last hours of an o u t l a w , based on a real case that occurred in 1 9 4 1 . D r o g u e t t concentrates on thoughts, memories, and emotions, transcribed in long and convoluted sentences, to the detriment of description or action. His sympathy for the d o w n t r o d d e n and his exaltation of criminals as saintly figures fighting the violence of the establishment serve him well in Eloy in m a k i n g a bewildered and very h u m a n victim from the rural bandit. Murderers are also the heroes of t w o other of D r o g u e t t ' s novels, El hombre que había olvidado, and Todas esas muertes. Patas de perro, about a child w h o w a s born w i t h d o g s ' legs, w o u l d have made an excellent short story, in the tradition of K a f k a ' s " M e t a m o r p h o s i s , " but it becomes repetitive and sentimental. Fernando Alegría (b. 1918), a literary critic of great perspicacity w i t h an unerring talent for the synthetic and brilliant descriptive phrase, has written several novels and short stories. A m o n g them, Caballo de copas [My Horse González] is outstanding for A l e g r i a ' s celebration of humble w o r k e r s . His h u m o r , and his b a c k g r o u n d in Realism and the picaresque mode serve him well to tell a story of mythical proportions: the immigrant to California w h o strikes it rich at the horse races. T h e snappy voice of the narrator relishes w o r d s as much as eating, drinking, and sex, peppering his descriptions w i t h imaginative expressions from Chile, Spain, and the multilingual San Francisco. T h e transfiguration of normal people into seekers of the truth (the name of the winning horse), their ability to face 273



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defeat, the incessant need to return to the ever-renewed search, gives the novel its significance. G a m b l i n g w i t h cards, horses, or love, these men - it is a w o r l d of men - can only trust in luck. A l e g r i a ' s other novels g o from a social realism touched w i t h lyricism, to more experimental texts, yet his best w o r k remains Caballo de copas for the k n o w l e d g e a b l e narration of immigrants' dreams. O t h e r novels by Alegría in this period are Noches del cazador, Mañana, los guerreros, Los días contados, and El paso de los gansos [The Chilean Spring], a m o v i n g narration of the military putsch against President Allende in Chile in 1 9 7 3 . A m o n g the younger writers, A n t o n i o Skarmeta (b. 1940) has been the most successful. W e l l - k n o w n as a storyteller w h o excels in capturing the voice of adolescents, the p o o r , children, and generally the not-yet-literary language of the n e w , his novel Soñé que la nieve ardía [I Dreamt the Snow Was Burning] narrates the adventures of a soccer player from the provinces w h o comes to Santiago to m a k e it big, only to discover that the country is concerned w i t h the bigger change and turmoil of the Allende government (1970-1973). H e discovers love and solidarity just as his dreams, private and social, are interrupted by a brutal coup. Skármeta has a unique capacity to deal w i t h important social problems in a lighthearted manner, and to provide a touch of h u m o r and lyricism even to the most desperate or destitute. T h i s first novel seems at first a t h r o w b a c k to the realist tradition, since it does have a clearly delineated set of characters and a well-described space, Santiago, w i t h an action that mixes politics, sports, and sex. W h a t is n e w is the intertextual play, the sparkling grace of the prose, the gently ironic tone, as if Chilean literature had at last become informal, youthful, and had gone out into the street not to report the drabness of existence, but to have a g o o d time c o m e w h a t m a y . A few writers of this period attained success w i t h extremely c o m p l e x novels, where the twists and turns of language on the page are of greater concern to readers than the referred w o r l d . O f course, readers can imagine aspects of C u b a n society from the w o r k s of José L e z a m a L i m a , C a b r e r a Infante, and Severo Sarduy, or of M e x i c o in the novels of Julieta C a m p o s , Salvador E l i z o n d o , and G u s t a v o Sainz. Nevertheless, w h a t sets them apart is the startling quality of their prose, the density of their intertextual play, and the flaunting of the fictional aspect of the text, characteristics that will endear them to readers of the late 1970s schooled in Poststructuralism and Postmodernism. José L e z a m a L i m a ( C u b a , 1912,—1976) is a novelist's novelist, his meandering syntax, baroque intricacy, and profuse references to classical m y t h o l o g y a l l o w i n g only a select and patient few to fully enjoy Paradiso [Paradiso]. Y e t , not many texts can be more rewarding than this masterpiece by a learned and sensuous poet. In essence a family saga, the 274 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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text moves as a majestic river incorporating morose and superbly vivid descriptions of asthma (the emblematic suffocation of a w h o l e gene ration), witchcraft, c o o k i n g , school and university life, sex in many variations and carried to mystical excess, music, and madness. L o n g philosophical discussions on homosexuality b o g d o w n a few later chapters and the action is sometimes blurry or dissolves into a contempla tive stasis, but the epic vigor of the text is sustained until the end, where the story of José Cerni, F o c i ó n , Fronesis, and O p p i a n o Licario comes to a close w i t h references to the H o l y G r a i l . José C e m i ' s father w a s in the army, w i t h discipline and goals supplied by the hierarchy and the organization, but José must find in his quest his o w n meaningful existence in a C u b a n society that is racing to the fall. Traditional m y t h o l o g y , w i t h Eros most frequently named in an avalanche of G r e e k and R o m a n names, seems hard put to account for the w o r l d described, and in this disjunction a carnivalesque celebration of existence takes over, fired by the experience of the b o d y and the beauty of language. Guillermo C a b r e r a Infante ( C u b a , b. 1929) used his experience as a film critic, short-story writer, and journalist in H a v a n a to create in Tres tristes tigres a refined, decadent, enervating image of a city fragmented into nightclubs, chance encounters, fast-moving cars, a bustling metropolis sustained by y o u t h , talent, culture, sex, and conversation. C a b r e r a offers a dazzling array of virtuosity, from the sophisticated structure of the novel to his seemingly unending flow of puns that threatens to shake out from every w o r d all possible meanings in a Joycean stream of experimentation. W h i l e there is a story line, it is not the primary appeal of the text: a photographer and his friends r o a m exploring the night life of H a v a n a , where an immensely fat singer appears and disappears, her talent unrecognized by the musical establishment. T h e suspense arises from w h a t the narrator, and not the characters, will do next: the reader is w h i s k e d from voice to voice, each one charged w i t h crackling energy and, while unique and capable of strongly suggesting a true h u m a n being, offering also a linguistic tour of the peculiar richness of C u b a n language. T h e displacements are not only from one to another level of speech, but also to extremely fine parodies of the best k n o w n C u b a n writers. After reading C a b r e r a Infante's spoof of Carpentier's or N i c o l a s Guillen's writing it is hard to read these revered writers again w i t h the solemnity they once c o m m a n d e d . Tres tristes tigres is an irreverent novel where prerevolutionary C u b a - and especially her language - is treated w i t h revolutionary a b a n d o n . N o t i c e a b l e are the frequent extremely insightful running commentaries of the characters to their o w n dialogue, constitut ing literary criticism of the first order and a subtle, entertaining e x a m p l e of metafiction. T h e intercalated story about a lost w a l k i n g cane bought by an A m e r i c a n tourist is masterful, told first by the man in a straightforward 2-75 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


LITERATURE

manner, then corrected by his wife; told again modulated into a "literary" style, and again punctured by the in turn more literary corrections of the wife, all four sections s h o w n later to be simply the invention of an unmarried C u b a n writer. T h e segment entitled " S o m e R e v e l a t i o n s , " consisting only of four blank pages, the page printed in mirror image, the drawings, and the s l o w i n g d o w n of time are reminiscent of the creative genius of Sterne, but C a b r e r a Infante has managed to make his daring accumulation of tricks into a style of his o w n . If occasionally cleverness may appear excessive and the appeal of a joke m a y pale at a second reading, the vitality of the complete novel rescues the trivial and establishes Tres tristes tigres a m o n g the very best Spanish A m e r i c a n novels ever written, as a brilliant and p r o b a b l y extreme case of the celebration of language. If Postmodernism corresponds to the meaningless jumble and agglome ration of post-industrial society, Severo Sarduy ( C u b a , 1937-1993) has taken further and w i t h the greatest refinement the irreducible coexistence of different traditions, the shattering of a stable identity, the opacity of meaning, and the simultaneity or indifference of time found in the contemporary global supermarket. His first novel, Gestos, participates in the impersonal narration and the atomistic, detailed description of objects characteristic of the nouveau roman. Gestos tells the story of a w o m a n w h o washes clothes during the day and sings by night, and is also rehearsing a G r e e k tragedy. H e r lover persuades her to plant a b o m b in the city's main electricity generator. Because of the explosion, the play goes on by candlelight and the theatre burns d o w n . Later, she participates in a political campaign motorcade, w h i c h she sabotages, and there are intimations of the messianic arrival of Fidel in H a v a n a . H o w e v e r , the story line is only anecdotal, the deeper meaning and enjoyment to be found in a vanguardist and exhilarating shattering of conventions of w h i c h the b o m b i n g of the electricity plant is emblematic. His second novel, De donde son los cantantes [From Cuba with a Song], is a prodigious kaleidoscope that, in four loosely interrelated stories, e x a m ines the Chinese, African, and European contribution to C u b a n culture. Drugs and sex, violence, and the divine furor of a carnivalesque existence are not presented in any conventional w a y , but s h o w n in every twist and jump of this unusual narrative w h e r e mimetic character presentation and development has been discarded in favor of a deeper proliferation of signs. Cobra is a novel of extreme c o m p l e x i t y . T h e names of characters here d o not refer to a stable personality, since all is in a state of flux (human beings not being immune to the roller-coaster of history), and n e w skins or layers of meaning are found by Sarduy in every w o r d . W o m e n become puppets or men in a series of ritual metamorphoses and displacements that take the narrative to C o p e n h a g e n , Brussels, and A m s t e r d a m ( C O B R A ) . T h e 276 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The Spanish American novel: 1950-1975 participation in the frenzied activities of T i b e t a n m o n k s is not gratuitous, since they are for Sarduy kindred spirits, also forced into exile, as many C u b a n s w e r e , by communist violence in 1959. Sarduy represents a break w i t h the novelists of the Boom, since the splintering of characters, story, and space cannot here be ingeniously reconstructed, as it can, for e x a m p l e , in the w o r k s of Fuentes or V a r g a s Llosa. Julieta C a m p o s w a s born in 1932 in H a v a n a , C u b a , but after doing postgraduate w o r k in France she has resided in M e x i c o since 1955. Muerte por agua is an insightful and richly textured psychological novel in w h i c h , next to the dialogues of a married couple and the w o m a n ' s mother, readers are given in alternating paragraphs the secret flow of conscience of the three characters. C a m p o s ' s style o w e s much to Virginia W o o l f - Muerte por agua is reminiscent of The Waves - and M a l c o l m L o w r y , authors she has studied in her essays, but she has her o w n voice and a convincing, original vision. T h e moments of deep and quiet happiness - a g a m e of cards and a cup of chocolate - a m o n g the neverchanging days of seclusion and meaningless struggle are movingly described. Tiene los cabellos rojizos y se llama Sabina delves into the instant in w h i c h a w o m a n contemplates the sea in A c a p u l c o on a Sunday afternoon. She is thinking about writing a novel about a w o m a n w h o contemplates the sea in A c a p u l c o on a Sunday afternoon. T h i s Escher-like text, a superior e x a m p l e of metafiction and rich intertextuality, displaces the traditional male-oriented interest in solving a reported crime to concentrate on the constellation of feelings, thoughts, emotions, and memories that m a k e up conscience. T i m e and its infinite density slows d o w n the pace of the novels of Salvador Elizondo ( M e x i c o , b. 1932) to an obsessive series of glimpses into a reality that, despite reiterated attempts at minute description, recedes from the text leaving the w o r d s behind as rhetorical golden chaff. Farabeuf o la cronica de un instante makes of torture and the surgical dismemberment of a b o d y an ultimate instance of the lovers' pleasure of offering their bodies to each other. T h e text itself suffers fragmentation into neat segments that p r o l o n g the agony of suspense. Indebted to Sade, Baudelaire, Bataille (Les Larmes d'Eros), and R o b b e - G r i l l e t , Elizondo's prose also has a hallucinatory cinematographic quality. El hipogeo secreto artfully combines metafictional reflections about the writing of the novel w i t h preparations for a night of sadistic love w i t h a w o m a n called Bitch. E l i z o n d o ' s elegant novels and deep thoughts on literature and art may still repel readers by his equation of suffering, domination, and mysticism, especially since the tortured partner is the w o m a n and in his autobiography E l i z o n d o has confessed to his belief that w o m e n attract and w i s h for physical violence. A t the vanguard of a n e w w a v e of writers w h o express the concerns of a 2-77 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE younger generation, greatly sophisticated and more interested in language and its play than in a sociological description of society, is the prolific M e x i c a n novelist G u s t a v o Sainz (b. 1940). His first novel, Gazapo, presents lively dialogues, telephone calls, and tape recordings of a group of y o u n g adolescents in M e x i c o C i t y . T h e language is witty, streetwise and colloquial. T h e hectic actions and the mystifications of insecure y o u n g people are rendered w i t h an appropriate intricate structure where time w a r p s and truth blends w i t h deception. W h i l e the novel s h o w s broken families, sexual obsession and experimentation, the m o v i n g death of a grandmother and a parade of M e x i c o City streets, the true p r o t a g o nist is the renovated language of y o u t h . In Obsesivos días circulares, Sainz moves on, invoking the tutelage of Joyce, to the dense language of y o u n g urban intellectuals, studded with fetishistic references to culture. T h e novel ends w i t h the repetition of a single sentence about decadence, its w o r d s more and more magnified until only a single meaningless letter is left on the page. F r o m a language of excess in Obsesivos días circulares, Sainz switches to the minimalist and impoverished vocabulary of a y o u n g w o m a n in La princesa del Palacio de Hierro [The Princess of the Iron Palace], a brilliant tour de force. A s the inane and incessant chatter of the protagonist, an employee at a department store, whirls around the same topics and w o r d s , slowly a picture emerges of venality, corruption, and violence.


[ 9 ]

The Spanish American novel: recent developments, 1975 to 1990 Gustavo Pellon

T h e term "Boom" has been controversial since it w a s first coined to refer to the series of Spanish A m e r i c a n novels that t o o k the w o r l d by storm in the 1960s. A t least in one sense, h o w e v e r , it is fortunate that the label has stuck, because it captures the confident, heady, atmosphere of the years w h e n it seemed that Spanish A m e r i c a w a s finally g o i n g to take its place a m o n g the nations of the earth, not only culturally, but even politically and economically. T h e writers of the Boom have kept on writing, but it is undeniable that, by the mid-1970s, with the rise of right-wing dictatorships in Argentina and Chile and the economic recession brought on by the oil crisis, the B o o m , in any sense of the w o r d , had c o m e to an end. It is significant that after 1975 none of the major authors associated w i t h the Boom publish "Boom n o v e l s . " Gabriel G a r c i a M á r q u e z ' s El otoño del patriarca (1975) [The Autumn of the Patriarch], a w o r k w h o s e narrative experimentation brought him closer to the style of other Boom writers, is f o l l o w e d by Crónica de una muerte anunciada (1981) [Chronicle of a Death Foretold], a short w o r k w h i c h returns to the clarity of Cien años de soledad (1967) [One Hundred Years of Solitude], and the Realism of even earlier w o r k s like La mala hora {1966) [In Evil Hour]. M a r i o V a r g a s Llosa's Conversación en La Catedral (1969) [Conversation in The Cathedral], w h i c h develops the c o m p l e x style of La casa verde (1966) [The Green House], is f o l l o w e d by the h u m o r o u s and readable Pantaleón y las visitadoras (1973) [Captain Pantoja and the Special Service]. Terra nostra ( 9 7 5 ) [Terra Nostra], C a r l o s Fuentes's most ambitious and difficult w o r k , is f o l l o w e d by La cabeza de la hidra (1978) [The Hydra Head], a much more accessible w o r k that makes an incursion into popular culture. José D o n o s o ' s El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970) [The Obscene Bird of Night], one of the murkiest and most challenging of the novels of the Boom, is f o l l o w e d by the light and easy Tres novelitas burguesas (1973). Even Julio C o r t á z a r , w h o s e Rayuela (1963) [Hopscotch] is often taken as emblematic of the militant experimentalism of the Boom, can be said to x


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LITERATURE

have made his last contribution to that tendency in the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel with Libro de Manuel (1973) [A Manual for Manuel}. Ultimately the Boom novel fell prey to the exigencies of its avant-garde aesthetics. T h e fact that its leading practitioners themselves realized that they had reached a dead end and successfully w r o t e themselves out of it is perhaps the best indication of their wealth of creativity. T h e i r subsequent w o r k s often explored new avenues opened by the novels of younger writers like M a n u e l Puig and Severo Sarduy. A l t h o u g h the term "PostBoom" has been coined in an attempt to describe these n e w tendencies, there is, in fact, no n e w movement as such. W h a t one finds is both a development of the Boom and a sharp reaction to its w o r l d v i e w and aesthetics. O n the part of the younger authors, the recognition of the accomplishment of the Boom novelists is coupled w i t h a realization that the game of technical virtuosity is played out and that the mythification of Spanish A m e r i c a n reality is an inappropriate response to their historical m o m e n t w h i c h is marked by unprecedented brutality and political repression. T h e writers of the 1970s and 1980s m o v e d a w a y from the ambitious architecture of all-encompassing novels like Rayuela [Hopscotch}, La casa verde, and Cien anos de soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude}. T h e destructive political and economic environment in w h i c h they lived (often in political exile, rather than the cultural self-expatriation of Boom writers) did not encourage the self-assured, albeit often pessimistic, vision of Spanish A m e r i c a n experience so evident in the w o r k s of the previous generation. T h e i r novels drew a w a y from myth t o w a r d s history even to the extreme of the documentary novel. T h e novel from 1975 to the present also reveals a major shift in sociohistorical perspective. A l t h o u g h written by politically liberal and leftist authors, the novels of the Boom were written from the social perspective of the center. M a l e authors of the middle and upper class predominate a m o n g the writers of the Boom. W i t h the 1970s the perspective of more marginal elements of society increasingly comes to the fore. W o m e n , h o m o s e x u a l s , Jews, and others w h o live culturally, socially, politically, and economically at the fringe of society and history, become the authors of these novels. In terms of aesthetics, there is also a movement t o w a r d the marginal. T h e writers of the Boom were primarily interested in producing w o r k s that w o u l d c o m m a n d the admiration accorded to masterpieces of high culture. It w a s primarily this aspect w h i c h helped the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel m o v e from the cultural periphery to the center, from Spanish A m e r i c a n capitals to those of the developed w o r l d : Paris, R o m e , L o n d o n , N e w Y o r k . Starting w i t h Puig and Sarduy, the cultural interest of the 280


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novelists of the new generation is in mass media and the genres of popular culture. T h e i r w o r k s employ, reflect, and engage the culture of the masses rather than solely that of the elite. A l t h o u g h they do not become producers of popular culture, they face the cultural reality of their times and seek to subvert the value system that d r a w s a sharp distinction between popular and high culture. W h i l e clearly benefitting from the Boom's legacy of narrative sophistication, recent novelists have found it necessary to return to a more overt social and political commitment than w a s manifested in the w o r k s of the Boom. T h e i r novels capture, not the voices of mythified caudillos, or alienated intellectuals, but the voices of those w h o for social, economic, and historical reasons have been silenced. In the heat of the often parricidal Post-Boom polemics, the novelists of the Boom have been chastised for their alleged political irresponsibility. F r o m the standpoint of the traumatic political events of the 1970s and the 1980s in Argentina, Chile, Central A m e r i c a , and Peru (among other countries), the depiction of Spanish A m e r i c a n history in G a r c í a M á r quez's Cien años de soledad has been seen as too soft-edged, his portrayal of the dictator in El otoño del patriarca [The Autumn of the Patriarch] as t o o sympathetic and even whimsical. Even V a r g a s L l o s a ' s La casa verde, w h o s e social criticism has a l w a y s been recognized, gives too static a p a n o r a m a from a patently aloof perspective. T o illustrate by means of analogy, one could say that w h a t the novelists of the 1970s and the 1980s have tried to do is to retell Cien años de soledad but from the v i e w p o i n t of M a u r i c i o Babilonia, or Pilar Ternera, or Petra C o t e s , rather than from the v i e w p o i n t of the oligarchy represented (however charmingly) by the Buendia family. Rather than deftly manipulate from a b o v e the fragmented life stories of characters like Bonifacia, Lituma, and Fushia in La casa verde into a monumental mural, more recent writers have sought to liberate them from their cog-like role by giving them t w o things they never have in real life: a position at center stage and their o w n voices. Writers of the Post-Boom have also reexamined their target audience and h o w the choice of a specific reading public implicitly determines the perspective assumed by a novelist. In a lecture delivered at the University of Virginia in 1986 the Argentine novelist, short-story writer, and critic M e m p o Giardinelli stated that, along w i t h questioning the desirability of writing the " G r e a t N o v e l of Latin A m e r i c a , " recent writers have g r o w n to distrust a stance that makes Latin A m e r i c a n authors into either purveyors of exoticism to readers in developed countries or warrantors of long-held stereotypes about Latin A m e r i c a . It w o u l d seem that Post-Boom writers have taken very much to heart the epigraph C o r t á z a r affixed to Rayuela: " N o t h i n g kills a man like having to represent a c o u n t r y . " 281


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T h e three clearest n e w currents in the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel after the Boom are the documentary novel (novela testimonio), the historical novel, and the detective novel in its hard-boiled variant. Beyond these it becomes difficult to catalogue the n e w developments in the novelistic production precisely because of the pluralism that predominates in this period. Nevertheless the fourth major current (made up of many tributar ies) could be given the heading: " A more diverse image of Latin A m e r i c a n experience." T h i s w o u l d include series of novels that break w i t h Spanish A m e r i c a n literary and historical stereotypes by giving voice to the experience of w o m e n , h o m o s e x u a l s , and Jews. A l t h o u g h the documentary novel has its origins in the 1960s, it becomes a recognized, powerful trend in the 1970s and 1980s. It is a hybrid genre w h i c h combines non-fiction documentary material (most often in the form of tape-recorded interviews) w i t h the novelist's Active recreation of complementary material. In actual practice, documentary novels fall somewhere within a spectrum that goes from pure documentary (a transcript of interviews) to a Active narrative where the narrator's speech is an artistic recreation based on the informant's actual speech patterns. T h e genre exists in a constant tension between non-fiction and fiction, and between the intentions of the informant and those of the author. Even in the most " d o c u m e n t a r y " of documentary novels, t w o subjectivities coexist and the friction between them curiously contributes to the aesthetic appeal of the form. F r o m an ethical point of view the documen tary novel is also interesting because it constantly prods the reader to consider the concept of " v e r s i o n " and the issue of varying versions of a historical event. T h i s ethical no-man's-land, w h i c h makes historians, social scientists, and novelists uneasy, is the ground where the documen tary novel thrives. F r o m 1970 to 1990, as the documentary novel has developed in Spanish A m e r i c a , it is possible to see an evolution in the genre. W h e n it first appeared in the 1960s its major preoccupation w a s testimonial (as its Spanish name novela testimonio bears out), and its urgent task w a s to give a voice to a different and repressed version of history or contemporary events. A more recent trend is to use the genre of the documentary novel as an occasion to reflect upon the process whereby "official stories" (includ ing documentary novels) form. Since space does not allow the discussion of even the major exponents of the documentary novel, it will be useful to focus on three authors w h o s e w o r k s give an idea of the scope of the genre: the C u b a n M i g u e l Barnet, the M e x i c a n Elena P o n i a t o w s k a , and the Argentine T o m á s Eloy M a r t í n e z . W h e n the anthropologist M i g u e l Barnet (b. 1940) w r o t e Biografía de un cimarrón [The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave], the first-person 282 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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account of 104-year-old ex-slave Esteban M o n t e j o , he had no intention of writing a documentary novel. A s he candidly put it in his introduction: " W e k n o w that to present an informant speaking is, in some measure, to create literature. But it is not our intention to create a literary document, a n o v e l " (p. 18). H e thought that he had written a contribution to C u b a n ethnography. H o w e v e r , the description Barnet gives of his method in the introduction - the rearrangement of anecdotes in a chronological order, the elimination of the informant's repetitions, the use of paraphrase so that the informant w o u l d be intelligible to readers, and the use of the firstperson narration so that the account " w o u l d not lose its spontaneity" and to facilitate the "insertion of w o r d s and idiomatic expressions typical of Esteban's s p e e c h " - reveals just h o w far Barnet's ethnographic study w e n t t o w a r d becoming a novel. Subsequently, due in large measure to the success of Biografía, Barnet decided to create a trilogy. T h u s Biografía, together w i t h Canción de Rachel (the story of an early twentieth-century star of the H a v a n a stage) and Gallego (the story of one of the many Galicians w h o emigrated to C u b a in the first decades of the century) w o u l d present a mosaic of C u b a n life from the turn of the century up to the R e v o l u t i o n , from the v i e w p o i n t of vastly different but socially marginal characters. In terms of the attitude t o w a r d the hybrid nature of the genre it is interesting to note that Canción is labelled " n o v e l a t e s t i m o n i o " in the blurb, whereas by the time Gallego appears the genre is sufficiently established to be called a " n o v e l a t e s t i m o n i o " w i t h o u t the selfconscious mediation of a hyphen. A l t h o u g h these subsequent novels lack methodological introductions like that of Biografía, they are both pre ceded by notes that give a brief explanation of the research involved and the procedure f o l l o w e d . Despite the h u m a n and historical interest of both Canción and Gallego, they pale in comparison with their predecessor Biografía, and the reason lies in both their subject matter and the method e m p l o y e d . It is impossible to top the saga of a 104-year-old m a n , w h o not only relates his living and w o r k i n g conditions as a slave in a sugar mill in the past century, but also tells the story of his successful escape, years of solitary life as a r u n a w a y slave, his participation in the W a r of Independence, and his disenchant ment w i t h the Republic's treatment of black veterans, and Blacks in general, after the w a r . T h r o u g h o u t , Esteban's powerful and eccentric personality permeates the b o o k (this despite Barnet's editing and polish ing) w i t h his prejudices, his racism (against Chinese laborers but also against whites), and his personal view of C u b a n society and history. It is not hard to imagine w h y this ethnographically valuable b o o k w h i c h uncannily a l l o w s us to hear the powerful voice of a strong-willed man from another century may have inspired other writers throughout Spanish A m e r i c a to explore the possibilities of the documentary novel. Certainly 283 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Barnet's unwitting but fortunate introduction of Esteban M o n t e j o into literature has significantly altered our concept of C u b a n history. For the creation of the second w o r k of the trilogy, Canción de Rachel, Barnet seems to have e m p l o y e d a similar method although his explana tory note is not at all specific: T h e confessions of Rachel, her adventurous life during the scintillating years of the Cuban belle epoque, the conversations in the cafés, in the streets, have made possible this book which reflects the atmosphere of frustration of Republican life. Rachel was a sui generis witness. She represents her time. . . Other characters w h o appear in this book, complementing the central monologue, are generally men of the theatre, writers, librettists . . . Canción de Rachel speaks of her, her life, just as she told it to me and as I later told it to her. In fact, establishing a procedure he will follow in subsequent w o r k s , three informants are fused into the fictional R a c h e l . Canción is rich in s h o w business anecdotes of early twentieth-century H a v a n a , and through Rachel's reminiscences Barnet captures w i t h a wealth of detail the atmosphere of petty rivalries, envy, and dreams of financial security and social acceptance of the stage w o r l d . Despite Barnet's suggestion that the life of this star of the popular stage represents the C u b a n experience in the days of the Republic, Canción lacks the historical, political, and cultural transcendence of Biografía. Barnet's major contribution in Canción is to give us access to a period of C u b a ' s history through the voice of a w o m a n . T h e third w o r k of the trilogy, Gallego, rights another w r o n g by highlighting the contribution to C u b a n society made by the large group of Spanish immigrants w h o fled impoverished Galicia and Asturias in the first decades of the twentieth century to m a k e a new life for themselves in the former Spanish colony. Here Barnet departs significantly from his method by creating his protagonist-narrator M a n u e l R u i z : " M a n u e l R u i z is A n t o n i o is Fabián is José. H e is the Galician immigrant w h o abandoned his village in search of a better life and adventure." T h e fact that M a n u e l R u i z is a fictitious character, albeit a composite of many real gallegos w h o s e lives Barnet w a s able to reconstruct through his research in the archives of the Galician collection at the Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística de la A c a d e m i a de Ciencias de C u b a , strictly makes Gallego more a well-documented novel than a documentary novel. Be that as it may, in Gallego Barnet manages to create a voice for M a n u e l R u i z that is as convincing and spell-binding in its o w n w a y as Esteban M o n t e j o ' s . T h r o u g h the life story of M a n u e l and the account of his struggle to earn a living in a strange and often hostile land, Barnet deals a d e a t h b l o w to the stereotypical gallego of jokes and stage c o m e d y . H e captures the culture shock and linguistic isolation suffered by Galician villagers w h o in most cases had neither been in a city until they embarked nor had ever had occasion to learn Spanish. T h r o u g h M a n u e l , Barnet also gives us a v i e w of 284 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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C u b a n history from 1916 to 1980 from the perspective of a w o r k i n g man. Barnet's most recent novel after the trilogy, La vida real, applies the documentary method to the experience of C u b a n s w h o emigrated to N e w Y o r k in the 1940s and 1950s. Elena P o n i a t o w s k a (b. 1932), possibly the Spanish A m e r i c a n author most associated w i t h the documentary novel, has written w o r k s that span the w h o l e of the non-fiction/fiction spectrum of documentary literature. P o n i a t o w s k a is the author of Hasta no verte jesús mío, La noche de Tlatelolco [Massacre in Mexico], Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela [Dear Diego], and Tuerte es el silencio. O f these La noche de Tlatelolco (a testimonial account of the massacre of M e x i c a n students in 1968) and Tuerte es el silencio ought to be considered non-fiction, while Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela is an epistolary novel based on the love affair between painter D i e g o Rivera and the Russian emigre painter Angelina Beloff. Hasta no verte jesús mío, the picaresque life story of a w o m a n from O a x a c a w h o fought in the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , most resembles Barnet's documentary novels in its autobiographical structure and in the method of composition f o l l o w e d by the author. Indirectly, the w o r k also has its roots in anthropological research. P o n i a t o w s k a has given an illuminating account of her method and her relationship w i t h her informant Jesusa Palancares in the article " H a s t a no verte Jesús m í o " published in Vuelta nine years after the publication of her b o o k : In order to write the book about Jesusa I used a journalistic procedure: the interview. T w o years before, I worked for a month and a half with the North American anthropologist Oscar Lewis, author of The Children of Sánchez and other books. Lewis asked me to help him "edit" Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and his Family. . . His informants used to come to see him at his apartment in la calle de Gutenberg: he would turn on his tape-recorder, ask questions, and I had to clean up those narratives from his pile of papers; that is, eliminate useless repetitions and digressions. This experience undoubtedly influenced me when I wrote Hasta no verte jesús mío. However, since I'm not an anthropologist, my work can be considered a testimonial novel and not an anthropological and sociological document. I used the anecdotes, ideas, and many expressions of Jesusa Palancares but I can't affirm that the narrative is a direct transcription of her life because she herself would reject it. I killed off the characters w h o seemed super fluous, I eliminated as many spiritualist sessions as I could, I elaborated wherever it seemed necessary, I pruned, I sewed, I patched up, I invented. . . Since I could only use the tape-recorder when she authorized it, every Wednesday night I would reconstruct what she had told me. (p. 10) #

W h a t emerged from P o n i a t o w s k a ' s novelistic adaptation of O s c a r L e w i s ' s anthropological method is a remarkable literary document. Hasta 285 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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no verte jesús mío is an account of the life of Jesusa, a w o m a n from O a x a c a w h o is caught up by the most important event of M e x i c o ' s history in the twentieth century, the R e v o l u t i o n , where she fights as a soldadera alongside her husband and then sinks back into anonymity and the most grinding poverty. Like Barnet's Esteban M o n t e j o , she is a solitary person w h o learned long ago not to depend on others for any help. Beyond adding to our understanding of the culture of poverty in the tradition of L e w i s ' s w o r k , probably the most important contribution the b o o k has made is to correct and add to the image of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n by giving a w o m a n ' s account. In some w a y s Hasta no verte Jesús mío is the obverse of La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962) [The Death of Artemio Cruz]. If Fuentes's novel tells the story of h o w a peasant betrays and uses the Revolution to rise to a position of great wealth and p o w e r by adopting the philosophy of the conquerors: "chingar o ser c h i n g a d o " ["screw or be s c r e w e d " ] , P o n i a t o w s k a gives voice to a w o m a n , a " c h i n g a d a , " w h o o u t w a r d l y seems a casualty of life but w h o has a l w a y s remained proudly true to herself. T h e image of the soldadera in M e x i c a n literature from A z u e l a ' s Los de abajo (1916) [The Underdogs] to Fuentes's La muerte de Artemio Cruz and Gringo viejo [The Old Gringo] is forever altered by the addition of P o n i a t o w s k a ' s Jesusa. A n o t h e r remarkable extra-generic w o r k that seems to straddle t w o of the recent currents in the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel, the documentary novel and the historical novel, is La novela de Perón [The Perón Novel] by T o m á s Eloy M a r t í n e z (Argentina, b. 1934). T h e ambiguity of the title (is it Perón's novel, or the novel about Perón?) is developed further by the author's statement w h i c h appears on the back cover: This is a novel in which everything is true. For ten years I collected thousands of documents, letters, voices of witnesses, pages from diaries, photographs. M a n y were unknown. In exile in Caracas, I reconstructed the memoirs that Perón dictated to me between 1966 and 1972 and those read to me by López Rega in 1970, w h o explained they were the general's even though he had written them. Later, in Mary land, I decided that the truths of this book could only be told in the language of imagination. Thus there slowly appeared a Perón w h o m no one had wanted to see: not the Perón of history but an intimate Perón. Using Perón's return to Argentina from exile in Spain on June 2 0 , 1 9 7 3 , as his narrative axis, M a r t i n e z moves back and forth in time to reconstruct an intimate portrait of the elusive Juan D o m i n g o Perón and Argentina's Perón adventure, but also to seek the roots of the traumatic events in Argentina in the 1970s and the 1980s. In the process he traces the careers of Isabel Perón, H é c t o r C á m p o r a , and L ó p e z R e g a . A d d i n g a dynamic tension to the novel, w h i c h w o u l d otherwise have been robbed of cohesion by the heterogeneous materials used to reconstruct Perón's life, is the plotline w h i c h describes the events surrounding Perón's return. For 286 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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as Perón's aeroplane "takes off from M a d r i d at d a w n of the longest day of the year, it flies t o w a r d the night of the shortest day in Buenos A i r e s " (p. 13). A long political night is indeed about to fall on Argentina, and M a r t i n e z lets us in behind the scenes as the extreme left and the extreme right of the Peronista party, in their attempts to appropriate the returning leader to their cause, prepare to clash at the airport where millions of Argentines have c o m e to w e l c o m e Perón. A t the heart of the colossal misunderstandings that led to that conflict lies the greatest insight M a r t i n e z offers us regarding Perón as a public figure and as a private person: throughout his life Perón perfected the ability to let others see in him w h a t they w a n t e d to see. T w o quotes from Perón (printed on the inside of the jacket and as an epigraph to the novel, respectively) bear out M a r t i n e z ' s thesis and Perón's awareness and exploitation of this trait: If I have been a protagonist of history again and again, it is because I contradicted myself. T h e socialist fatherland? I invented it. T h e conservative fatherland? I keep it alive. I have to blow in every direction like a weathercock. W e Argentines, as you know, characteristically always think that we have the truth. M a n y Argentines come to this house wanting to sell me a different truth as if it were the only one. What do you want me to do? I believe all of them! Juan Perón to the author, March 26, 1970 Unlike Barnet and P o n i a t o w s k a w h o seek to understand the history of their countries and the nature of their societies by seeking informants from the masses, M a r t i n e z goes right to the top. Different as his strategy is, it is every bit as demythifying as Barnet's and P o n i a t o w s k a ' s . By piercing the bubble of Juan D o m i n g o Perón, w h o s e p o w e r to hypnotize the Argentine people is far from spent, M a r t i n e z also offers an oppor tunity to revise his country's history. By alternating the v i e w p o i n t from Perón and his gray eminence L ó p e z R e g a to that of the masses, through fictitious characters like A r c á n g e l o G o b b i (one of L ó p e z R e g a ' s thugs w h o is preparing to instigate the riot against the leftist Peronistas at the airport) and the Montoneros (guerrilla) N u n A n t e z a n a and D i a n a Bronstein w h o w a n t to claim Perón for their cause, M a r t i n e z innoculates the palace intrigue perspective with a solid dose of "history from the ground u p . " M a r t i n e z ' s La novela de Perón is a valuable contribution to the revision of history being carried out by many Spanish A m e r i c a n novels. T h e docu mentary novel has had a great impact in revising our concept of Spanish A m e r i c a n history: another genre, the n e w historical novel, is adding to the current meditation on the historical process and w h i c h versions of that process c o m e to be history. Practiced by canonized novelists of the Boom as well as by younger writers, the n e w historical novel is perhaps the most important trend in 287 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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the development of the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel in the 1980s. It differs from the traditional historical novel chiefly because it shares the revisionistic spirit of the documentary novel and because in some, though not all cases, it implies or overtly suggests a deconstruction of its o w n historical discourse. T h u s often alongside the historical reconstruction there is a parallel commentary on the process whereby history is constructed. A l t h o u g h there does not seem to be a direct connection, many recent Spanish A m e r i c a n historical novels curiously seem to follow the strategies associated w i t h the tendency of literary criticism k n o w n as N e w Historicism. A l t h o u g h varied in their approaches, N e w Historical critics a d v o cate a rejection of pure formalism in favor of a self-conscious sociohistorical contextualization of literary texts. Spanish A m e r i c a n literature seems to be m a k i n g a similar m o v e from the heightened subjectivity and selfreflexivity of the novels of the Boom to the diffident and subtle approach to social and historical objectivity in the documentary novels and in the historical novels of the t w o decades from 1970. T h e distinction between fiction and non-fiction is increasingly explored and challenged. T h e best example of this n e w type of historical novel is Fernando del Paso's Noticias del Imperio. Fernando del Paso ( M e x i c o , b. 1935), w h o s e earlier novels Jose Trigo and Palinuro de Mexico met w i t h critical acclaim, far surpasses his previous w o r k w i t h the haunting evocation of the ephemeral Empire of M a x i m i l i a n and C a r l o t a in Noticias del Imperio. Y e t contrary to w h a t one might expect, his evocation of this period in M e x i c o ' s past is not haunting principally because of the g l a m o u r cast by a nostalgic reconstruction. T h e haunting quality of Noticias del Imperio is akin to T o m a s Eloy M a r t i n e z ' s tireless groping for the elusive Juan D o m i n g o Peron. A l t h o u g h del Paso deftly deploys a vast array of sophisticated narrative and rhetorical devices, the mainspring of the novel is the author's obsessive, nearly morbid, probing into the actions and motivations of the main protagonists in one of the most traumatic moments in M e x i c o ' s convulsive history. F r o m a stylistic point of view Noticias del Imperio is as ambitious and encyclopedic as any of the masterpieces of the Boom. A dazzling variety of Active and non-fictive narrative registers are marshalled by del Paso in his attempt to present a panoramic w h o l e c o m p o s e d of conflictive and contradictory parts. Noticias del Imperio, therefore, requires of its readers constant evaluation of the status of the text at hand and a consequent readjustment of readerly expectations. Reading Noticias del Imperio is akin to viewing a historical mural to w h i c h photographs have been affixed. In accordance w i t h a technique often employed in historical films, the text of del Paso's novel is preceded by a paragraph that establishes the historical context for the reader: 288



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In 1861, President Benito Juarez suspended payment of the Mexican foreign debt. This suspension was used as a pretext by the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, to send to M e x i c o an army of occupation with the intention of creating a monarchy in that country, at whose head would be a European, Catholic prince. T h e chosen one was the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg w h o , about the middle of 1864, arrived in M e x i c o in the company of his wife, Princess Carlota of Belgium. This book is based on that historical event and on the tragic destiny of the ephemeral Emperor and Empress of M e x i c o . T h e generic expectations raised by this traditional introductory statement are immediately challenged by the next w o r d s the reader sees: " C h a t e a u de B o u c h o u t 1 9 2 7 . " B o u c h o u t w a s the palace near Brussels where the mad C a r l o t a died sixty years after her husband w a s executed by a firing squad in M e x i c o . T w e l v e chapters w i t h the heading " C h a t e a u de B o u c h o u t 1 9 2 7 " (including the beginning and the ending chapters) report C a r l o t a ' s circular m o n o l o g u e concerning her ill-fated M e x i c a n adventure and its aftermath. T h i s gripping stream of consciousness (which pays h o m a g e to M o l l y B l o o m ' s in Joyce's Ulysses) is intercalated by eleven other chapters reporting the historical events through a series of different narrative registers. A m o n g these registers are: traditional historical novel passages, the correspondence between t w o French brothers (one a soldier serving in the occupation army in M e x i c o and the other a Socialist in Paris), a macabre p a r o d y of M a x i m i l i a n ' s execution imagined according to the meticulous p o m p of Imperial court ritual, purely historical narrative, as well as historiographical and metahistorical reflections on the part of del Paso. W i t h its plurality of voices (fictive, real, lucid, or insane), Noticias del Imperio recreates a historical period w i t h a greater degree of complexity than a traditional historical novel and with greater vividness than a straight history. Furthermore it challenges readers and writers to question the established myths of the Spanish A m e r i c a n historical experience. Paradoxically, w i t h o u t dispersing the poetic allure of the "ephemeral Emperor and Empress of M e x i c o , " del Paso démythifies them. T h e y , as well as other chief protagonists (particularly Benito Juarez), are stripped of imperialistic self-justification and nationalistic vituperation. Finally del Paso calls for an acceptance of C a r l o t a and M a x i m i l i a n as M e x i c a n protagonists of M e x i c a n history: " i f not M e x i c a n by birth, M e x i c a n by death. By death and madness. A n d perhaps it w o u l d be a g o o d idea to do this so that they will not continue to haunt us: the souls of the unburied a l w a y s protest our forgetfulness" (p. 6 4 3 ) . T h r o u g h o u t the novel, del Paso remains true to his self-imposed double goal: recreation of the historical event and meditation on the "tragic destiny" of its protagonists. T h e acrimonious debate unleashed (particularly in C o l o m b i a and 289


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Venezuela) by the publication of El general en su laberinto [The General in his Labyrinth] by Gabriel García M á r q u e z ( C o l o m b i a , b. 1928) is perhaps the best p r o o f that can be adduced to demonstrate the need for the revisionism of the n e w historical novel in Spanish A m e r i c a . T h e novel, an account of the last months of Bolivar's life ( M a y 8,1830, to December 1 7 , 1830), offers an unprecedentedly h u m a n portrait of the " L i b e r t a d o r " and, like del Paso's novel, also attempts to drain another festering historical w o u n d . H o w e v e r , if del Paso seeks to write a belated grandiose requiem for M a x i m i l i a n and C a r l o t a , G a r c í a M á r q u e z employs the simpler form of the dirge. A l l the trappings of p o w e r are set aside for this last trip both symbolically and historically for w e are given a minute description of the few personal effects that accompanied Bolivar w h e n he left B o g o t á for the last time. García M á r q u e z ' s " v a l e t ' s - e y e - v i e w " of Simón Bolívar w a s bound to shock readers familiar only with the sanctimonious portrait of the " L i b e r t a d o r " given in school t e x t b o o k s and the equestrian bronze icon of South A m e r i c a n plazas. El general en su laberinto is a story of dissolution: the dissolution of a body politic (Bolivar's dream of a Spanish A m e r i c a n federation) and the dissolution of Bolivar's b o d y . García M á r q u e z ' s fundamental strategy in this novel is to employ the historical facts and details for poetic effect in order to elucidate Bolivar's final destiny. T h e most obvious poetic device extracted from historical fact is the last trip itself w h i c h in the novel gradually acquires the irresistible force of an archetypal structure. T h e last v o y a g e from B o g o t á to Santa M a r t a , w h i c h readers can follow thanks to the inclusion of a m a p in the appendix, is also a symbolic descent from p o w e r in the height of the A n d e s to an almost a n o n y m o u s death at the sea level of the Caribbean. It is also Bolivar's v o y a g e h o m e from the politically and climatically inhospitable city of the A n d e s t o w a r d the w a r m t h of his native C a r i b b e a n . A s is well k n o w n , this topographical imagery, here totally justified by historical events, is a recurrent motif in G a r c i a M á r q u e z ' s w o r k s and reflects w h a t he sees as an important cultural and historical conflict between A n d e a n and C a r i b b e a n C o l o m b i a . Similarly, the focus on the last months of Bolivar's life furnishes Garcia M á r q u e z with an excellent opportunity to satisfy his enduring fascination with the solitude of p o w e r . H a v i n g previously studied the personal effect of p o w e r on those w h o wield it, in the figures of C o l o n e l Aureliano Buendia in Cien años de soledad and the dictator of El otoño del patriarca, García M á r q u e z clearly saw the challenge in the possibilities and limitations offered by a historical figure as w e l l - k n o w n as Simón Bolívar. Despite the historical basis of the previous fictional characters, G a r c i a M á r q u e z ' s imagination w a s totally unfettered. In El general en su laberinto he places himself in the position of having to establish a dialogue between his poetic interpretation of history and the facts of history itself. 290 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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In the afterword of the novel, the author explains h o w he set out to write the w o r k and h o w the project evolved. G a r c í a M á r q u e z maintains that he w a s first attracted to the last days of Bolivar's life because of his experiences as a child in the M a g d a l e n a river rather than because of the Liberator himself. Furthermore he explains that he w a s not very con cerned about the historical basis for his novel since "the last trip on the river is the least documented period of Bolivar's life" (p. 269). T h i s expectation that he w o u l d have a relatively free hand soon vanished and he found himself immersed in endless research: " f r o m the first chapter I had to do some research into the w a y he lived, and that research led to more and more and more endlessly. For t w o long years I gradually sank into the quicksand of a torrential, contradictory, and often uncertain d o c u m e n t a t i o n " (p. 270). Eventually G a r c í a M á r q u e z found himself consulting a w h o l e team of expert historians ( w h o m he a c k n o w l e d g e s by name) in order to learn anything from Bolivar's shoe size to the tortuous nuances of his political thought, to the fact that Bolivar, as he says, could not have "eaten mangoes w i t h the childish delight I had attributed to him, for the very g o o d reason that mangoes did not c o m e to the A m e r i c a s until many years later" (p. 2 7 1 ) . N o t surprisingly, in keeping with G a r c í a M á r q u e z ' s interest in the C a r i b b e a n , his portrayal of Simón Bolívar underscores the " L i b e r t a d o r ' s " Caribbean-ness. G i v e n G a r c í a M á r q u e z ' s concept of Caribbean-ness as heightened sensuality, life-affirming earthiness, suspicion of grandilo quence, and a relaxed attitude t o w a r d the mixing of races, the portrait of the C a r i b b e a n Bolivar that emerges has a thoroughly demythifying effect with respect to the official myth, although in a different sense, of course, G a r c í a M á r q u e z is creating a n e w myth. Appropriately, therefore, on the first page of the novel readers encounter not the uniformed Bolivar of T i t o Salas's paintings but the naked body of a sick man floating in a bathtub. A few moments later w h e n his servant has covered Bolivar's naked body w i t h a ruana (the p o n c h o of A n d e a n C o l o m b i a ) , the readers are given a perfect emblem of a C a r i b b e a n man out of his element. T h r o u g h o u t the novel, together w i t h the account of the major historical events of Bolivar's last months - Santander's betrayal, Venezuela's secession from C o l o m b i a , and Sucre's assassination - G a r c í a M á r q u e z portrays the general's long-standing love affair w i t h M a n u e l a Sáenz as well as numerous passing love affairs w i t h w o m e n of different social classes and races. R a c e is another important element in the portrayal of the demythified Bolivar. In the novel Bolivar is described as having hair with "coarse C a r i b b e a n c u r l s " (p. 12) and "the coarse sideburns and mustache of a m u l a t t o " (p. 82). M o s t interesting of all, h o w e v e r , is a brief but explicit account of the pictorial mythification of Bolivar that G a r c í a M á r q u e z 291 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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intercalates in a passage w h e r e he describes different portraits for w h i c h Bolivar sat: T h e oldest of his portraits was an anonymous miniature painted in Madrid when he was sixteen years old. A t the age of thirty-two another was painted in Haiti, and both were faithful to his age and his Caribbean type. He had inherited African blood through a paternal great-great-grandfather w h o had a son with a slavewoman, and it was so evident in his features that the aristocrats of Lima called him "El Z a m b o " [someone of mixed Indian and African blood]. But as his glory grew, painters idealized him little by little, cleansing his blood, mythifying him, until they implanted him in official memory with the Roman profile of his statues. (p. 184) T h e C a r i b b e a n man w a s suppressed in the official portraits of Bolivar just as the C a r i b b e a n coast has been discounted from the "official p o r t r a i t " of C o l o m b i a . In his previous novels G a r c i a M a r q u e z (thanks to his w o r l d w i d e readership) has corrected the univocal image of an A n d e a n C o l o m bian w i t h Castilian pretensions. El general en su laberinto, Garcia M a r q u e z ' s first historical novel, joins other Spanish A m e r i c a n novels in their efforts to demythify history, to reverse the " c l e a n s i n g " project by facing up to the plurality of visions, the complexity of human character in history. For most Spanish Americans Bolivar w a s a gold-embroidered uniform with a mask-like face; G a r c i a M a r q u e z has e x h u m e d and recovered his body. T h e n e w historical novels seem to have a penchant for e x h u m i n g corpses even if their purpose is to conduct a rigorous post-mortem and make amends by providing a proper burial. T h e w o r d s of T h o m a s B r o w n e : " B u t w h o k n o w s the destiny of his bones, or h o w many times he will be buried?" w h i c h appear as one of the t w o epigraphs of Gringo vie jo by C a r l o s Fuentes ( M e x i c o , b . 1928) therefore seem particularly appropri ate. A n d Gringo viejo does quite a bit of e x h u m i n g . Figuratively it exhumes the writer A m b r o s e Bierce from his unjustly dusty niche in the pantheon of A m e r i c a n writers, but it exhumes him in order to kill him again by recreating his possible death in M e x i c o during the R e v o l u t i o n . Actually Fuentes portrays t w o " d e a t h s " of A m b r o s e Bierce since he is first murdered by the Revolutionary T o m a s A r r o y o and later he is literally e x h u m e d and his corpse is shot by a firing squad on Pancho Villa's orders. Historically all that is k n o w n (as Fuentes states in the " A u t h o r ' s N o t e " at the end of the novel) is that Bierce w e n t to M e x i c o in 1913 and disappeared. In Fuentes's novel he disappears into another man's grave because the novel's protagonist Harriet W i n s l o w claims Bierce as her father and has him buried in her o w n father's t o m b . H e r father's " t o m b " w a s a pretense to save the family's honor since he had not really died in the Spanish A m e r i c a n W a r but stayed in C u b a to live w i t h a black w o m a n . In a different sense many other things are e x h u m e d in Gringo viejo, 292 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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chief a m o n g them the biggest corpse in twentieth-century M e x i c o : the R e v o l u t i o n . A n d in doing so, Fuentes also exhumes the tradition of the novel of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , even including his o w n earlier attempt to understand the betrayal of that process in La muerte de Artemio Cruz. T h u s Gringo viejo is c o m p o s e d of historical and literary corpses, of quotations and allusions to A m b r o s e Bierce's haunting short stories based on his experiences as a soldier in the A m e r i c a n Civil W a r as well as to M a r i a n o A z u e l a ' s Los de abajo and M a r t i n Luis G u z m a n ' s El dguila y la serpiente (1928) [The Eagle and the Serpent]. Fuentes employs a third-person narration throughout the novel, but the point of view alternates in the novel's t w e n t y - t w o chapters. A l t h o u g h the focus of attention is primarily on the old gringo and secondarily on Harriet W i n s l o w and General T o m a s A r r o y o , Fuentes makes sure to include the perspectives of soldaderas, other Revolutionary officers, soldiers, and a b o y . T h e three principal points of v i e w of A m b r o s e Bierce, Harriet W i n s l o w , and T o m a s A r r o y o are b o u n d thematically by the preoccupation w i t h fatherhood that has become a hallmark of M e x i c a n twentieth-century literature. F r o m O c t a v i o Paz's El laberinto de la soledad (1950) [The Labyrinth of Solitude] to Juan R u l f o ' s Pedro Paramo (1955) [Pedro Paramo], and Fuentes's o w n La muerte de Artemio Cruz, the racial and existential condition of M e x i c a n s has been defined by the rape of native M e x i c a n w o m e n (symbolized by L a M a l i n c h e , Cortes's Indian mistress) by Spanish conquerors and their latter-day surrogates in the landed oligarchy. T y p i c a l of this novel w h i c h mixes the destinies of characters from M e x i c o and the United States is the playing out of this most M e x i c a n of motifs in the relationship between a M e x i c a n Revolutionary, an old A m e r i c a n writer, and a y o u n g A m e r i c a n w o m a n w h o , having taken e m p l o y m e n t as the governess of the wealthy M i r a n d a family, finds herself in the midst of the R e v o l u t i o n . Paternal and parricidal feelings fill the hearts of the old gringo and Harriet W i n s l o w while A r r o y o seeks to avenge his illegitimate birth and reclaim his birthright. A r r o y o comes to grief precisely because he pursues the quest for his personal birthright (as a red-haired, y e l l o w eyed Miranda) at the expense of the collective birthright of the peasants and thus betrays the R e v o l u t i o n . Repeated allusions to A m b r o s e Bierce's o w n short story " A H o r s e m a n in the S k y , " a Civil W a r story of parricide and filial obedience, serve to illuminate the motivations of the three main characters. By juxtaposing the A m e r i c a n Civil W a r to the civil w a r M e x i c a n s call their R e v o l u t i o n , by fatally bringing an old gringo and a y o u n g gringa into the life of a M e x i c a n Revolutionary, and by delving into the art and M e x i c a n fate of a N o r t h A m e r i c a n writer, Fuentes is lancing old w o u n d s on both sides of the border and effacing difference. A l t h o u g h space does not a l l o w its discussion, El mar de las lentejas [Sea 293 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


of Lentils] by A n t o n i o Benítez R o j o ( C u b a , b . 1931) is yet another excellent e x a m p l e of the n e w type of historical novel that is written w i t h self-critical open-endedness. Other important historical novels have also made their appearance in this period but they largely seem to follow older patterns. T h i s is the case w i t h V a r g a s L l o s a ' s La guerra del fin del mundo [The War of the End of the World] w h i c h , despite an implicit dialogical relationship w i t h the historical text Os sertóes (1902) [Rebellion in the Backlands] by Euclides da C u n h a , seems in other respects to be a successor of the traditional historical novel. L i k e w i s e A n t o n i o Skármeta's novel about the N i c a r a g u a n R e v o l u t i o n against S o m o z a , La insurrección [The Insurrection], w i t h its totally uncritical vision seems to hark back to the model of Alejo Carpentier ( C u b a , 1904) in a novel like Consagración de la primavera (1978). A n o t h e r trend that illustrates important thematic and aesthetic changes in the novel after the Boom is the n e w hard-boiled novel. By marrying the generic expectations o f a popular genre, the detective novel, especially in the A m e r i c a n variant k n o w n as the hard-boiled novel, w i t h a thematic structure that subverts the major ideological tenets of the genre, the practitioners of the n e w hard-boiled novel are taking a cue from M a n u e l Puig (Argentina, 1932-1990). First perceived as a n e w addition to the Boom, Puig has c o m e to be regarded more and more (together w i t h Severo Sarduy) as an important transitional figure w h o helped the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel out of the dead end to w h i c h it had been led by its avantgardist tendencies. Because of his bold attempts to eliminate all forms of narration that w o u l d impose a particular authorial (and authoritative) viewpoint, Puig w a s naturally considered to be an experimentalist. His narrative experimentation h o w e v e r w a s ideologically motivated by his agenda to c o m b a t structures of dominance in politics, gender relations, and genre relations. Principally Puig did this through an appropriation of mass culture. His attitude t o w a r d mass culture, h o w e v e r , did not share the ironic elitism of the practitioners of " c a m p " but sprang from the compassionate realiza tion that kitsch often provides the only m o d e of expression for the vast majority. M o t i v a t e d by his egalitarianism as m u c h as by a deep nostalgia for the cinema of his childhood, Puig therefore sought to elevate the quality of mass culture genres but a l w a y s strove to remain accessible to a vast readership. In both regards he w a s to prove an inspiration to many nascent as well as established Latin A m e r i c a n novelists. M e m p o Giardinelli (Argentina, b . 1947) and O s v a l d o Soriano (Argen#

1

1

A n e x a m p l e o f the use o f p o p u l a r culture forms to c o m b a t rather than foment escapism is La Guaracha del macho Camacho [Macho Camacho's Beat] by Luis Rafael Sánchez (Puerto R i c o , b. 1936).



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tina, b. 1943) are t w o practitioners of the n e w hard-boiled novel w h o have acquired an international reputation. Despite patent differences in outlook and strategy, the w o r k s of Giardinelli and Soriano share important traits. First of these is their c o m m o n fascination w i t h the hard-boiled variant of the detective novel. F r o m their reading of R a y m o n d Chandler, Dashiell H a m m e t t and R o s s M a c d o n a l d - but also Ernest H e m i n g w a y they adopt the terse and colloquial narrative style as well as the general plot lines and stock situations. M u c h as in the case of Puig, their motivation for b o r r o w i n g the mechanics of the genre is double: personal pleasure mixed w i t h nostalgia for their youthful reading adventures, and a mature realization that the genre can be adapted to fit their aesthetic and ideological goals. N o t the least attractive of these particularities is the hard-boiled novel's unsentimental (but romantic) depiction of a fundamentally moral individual fighting w i t h o u t much hope of true success (unlike his counterpart in classic detective stories) to keep his integrity in a corrupt and violent w o r l d . A s members of a generation that came of age in Argentina at the time of the M o n t o n e r o s ' s guerrilla movement and the unprecedented repression and persecution f o l l o w i n g the military c o u p of 1976, both Giardinelli and Soriano are obsessed with violence. Scenes of graphic violence recur in their novels, and their b l o w - b y - b l o w descriptions reveal an a m b i g u o u s combination of horror and fascination. Since the context in w h i c h this violence occurs in the w o r k s of both Giardinelli and Soriano is most often either explicitly or implicitly political, its depiction is as much a form of denunciation as it is a form of therapy. Giardinelli has published five novels: ¿Por qué prohibieron el circo?, La revolución en bicicleta, El cielo con las manos, Luna caliente, and Qué solos se quedan los muertos. O f these only Luna caliente and Qué solos se quedan los muertos can be said properly to belong to the genre of the hardboiled novel, although the other three also bear marks of the influence of the detective story genre. Luna caliente is a detective thriller in w h i c h an eminently civilized and well-educated Argentinian l a w y e r returns from his studies in Paris to his h o m e t o w n , Resistencia. A l t h o u g h the year is 1 9 7 7 , one year after the military c o u p , and there are allusions to fear generated by the state of martial l a w , Giardinelli goes out of his w a y not to discuss politics in the novel. T h e protagonist, R a m i r o , seems apolitical and interested only in his local prestige and the possibility of obtaining a teaching position in the provincial university. Y e t , as the fast-moving series of events typical of the detective thriller genre is unleashed w i t h just the right measure of sex and violence, the reader is simultaneously led (guided by R a m i r o ' s thoughts) to reflect with horror about h o w easy it is for a normal human being to c o m m i t criminal acts coldly and unscrupulously. T h e simplicity of Luna caliente, w h i c h reads at breakneck speed, is 295 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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deceptive because it has been elaborately crafted. T h e use of the indirect free style for the narration of the story is a g o o d example of Giardinelli's care. Since this hybrid style of narration combines the third-person objectivity of w h a t is narrated but can exploit the intimacy of a firstperson narration permitting the novel's feverish pitch, Giardinelli can have it both w a y s . T h a n k s to the exclusive use of R a m i r o ' s point of v i e w , readers experience the protagonist's mental and moral confusion at close range but are denied the easy solution of declaring him deranged by the effect of objectivity created by the use of the grammatical third person. Despite the deft handling of all the techniques and c o m m o n p l a c e s of the hard-boiled novel, Luna caliente is actually a loving reconstruction of the genre applied to a different context. Like the 1947 Ford driven by R a m i r o , w h i c h has been obsessively restored by his friend G o m u l k a , the novel's b o r r o w i n g s from the detective genre call attention to themselves w i t h parodic intent. T h u s the 1947 Ford w h i c h Giardinelli b o r r o w s from R a y m o n d Chandler (Fords were Philip M a r l o w e ' s favorite cars) is meant to be something ordinary in Chandler's novels but becomes a less than adequate g e t - a w a y car in 1977 Argentina as R a m i r o himself realizes (p. 27). Perhaps the most explicit instance of parody is w h e n R a m i r o decides not to return to the scene of the crime because he remembers that is h o w murderers are a l w a y s caught in detective novels (p. 80). Luna caliente, therefore, functions doubly, as a crime thriller and as a meditation on the insight gained from recent Argentine history that the most heinous crimes are not the exclusive purview of monsters but are easily accessible to all. T o w a r d the end Giardinelli leaves the bounds of Realism as it becomes clear that the murdered Araceli, the sexually insatiable thirteen-year-old w h o s e irresistible attraction has triggered the w h o l e chain of events, has c o m e back to life. A t this point the thriller becomes allegory: Araceli, the source of so much violence, fascination, and desire w h o , even w h e n left for dead, comes back to follow R a m i r o into exile, is A r g e n t i n a . Que solos se quedan los muertos sticks even more faithfully to the pattern of the hard-boiled novel since its protagonist, Jose Giustozzi, an Argentine exile in M e x i c o , takes on the role of detective in order to solve the murder of an old girlfriend. T h e themes of the accessibility of violence to decent people, the rootlessness of exile, and nostalgia for a lost time and place combine w i t h a fast-moving first-person account of the drug trade and double dealing. A g a i n an ordinary person is suddenly caught up in a w h i r l w i n d of violent and extraordinary circumstances. In the tradition of the hard-boiled hero, Giustozzi k n o w s he will probably lose if he stands his g r o u n d but has reached the point where he can no longer run a w a y . 2

2

In a conversation in the spring o f 1988 at the University o f V i r g i n i a , M e m p o Giardinelli told me that for him A r a c e l i w a s A r g e n t i n a .



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O s v a l d o Soriano has written five novels: Triste, solitario y final, No habrá más penas ni olvido [A Funny Dirty Little War], Cuarteles de invierno [Winter Quarters: A Novel of Argentina], A sus plantas rendido un león, and Una sombra ya pronto serás. T h e parody of the hard-boiled novel is more explicit in his w o r k than in Giardinelli's, but Soriano's novels add an element of exaggeration and slapstick to the typical violence of the genre. Soriano's hallmark is the careful preparation of chaotic situations that culminate in cathartic apotheoses of the absurd. T h e influence of the masters of the hard-boiled genre is matched by that of Laurel and H a r d y . A l t h o u g h Soriano has polished his technique w i t h each succeeding novel and his capacity to imagine and m a k e readers accept the most absurd of situations s h o w s no sign of abating, the potent recipe w a s already fully present in his first novel. Triste, solitario y final, w h o s e title comes from M a r l o w e ' s self-description t o w a r d the end of Chandler's The Long Goodbye, has a promising premise. In 1965, shortly before his death, Stan Laurel hires the aging, unemployed Philip M a r l o w e to investigate w h y H o l l y w o o d producers w o n ' t hire him. Laurel dies before M a r l o w e can find out and the private detective only resumes the investigation in 1972 w h e n he runs into an Argentinian journalist called Soriano at Laurel's grave. In the rest of the novel M a r l o w e and his Argentinian side kick, after receiving countless beatings, discover a conspiracy. T h e novel reaches a c l i m a x w h e n M a r l o w e and Soriano kidnap Charlie Chaplin at the A c a d e m y A w a r d s ' ceremony and p r o v o k e a monumental fist-fight a m o n g H o l l y w o o d celebrities in the tradition of the bar-room brawls of Westerns and the pie-throwing scenes of comedies. Besides the introduction of slapstick and the parodie effect produced by the depiction of the older, poorer, bus-riding M a r l o w e , Soriano makes a more serious fundamental change. By inserting himself as a character w h o befriends M a r l o w e and collaborates w i t h him, Soriano departs from the traditionally individualistic portrayal of the protagonist of N o r t h A m e r i can hard-boiled novels. In Triste, solitario y final, as in Soriano's subsequent novels, the solitude of the protagonists (who are a l w a y s loners) is corrected by solidarity. Soriano's next t w o novels, No habrá más penas ni olvido and Cuarteles de invierno, take place in the fictive Argentinian t o w n C o l o n i a V e l a , and although the h u m o r and the alert eye for absurd situations are hardly absent in them, the playfulness of the first novel recedes before the bleaker political subject matter of these novels w h i c h depict Argentina in the 1970s. No habrá más penas ni olvido and Cuarteles de invierno portray h o w the lives of ordinary people are profoundly changed by the military c o u p and the political events that led up to it. Soriano seeks the microcosmic rather than the macrocosmic view, the anecdote rather than 297 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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the p a n o r a m a , the provincial t o w n rather than the capital. In the prologue to the first edition of No habrá más penas ni olvido, after explaining the historical and political context of the events portrayed in the novel (they occur between O c t o b e r of 1973 and July of 1974), Soriano states his strategy: " T h e action takes place in a small t o w n of the province of Buenos Aires where all the characters k n o w each other. T h e maneuver of Perón and his minister, José L ó p e z R e g a , thus acquires absurd and grotesque dimensions" (p. 12). Indeed the microcosmic view of the process w h i c h prepared the w a y for the military c o u p , whereby old-time Peronistas were deceived and eliminated at Perón's behest, proves devas tating in the setting of a small t o w n . T h e w h o l e action is reduced to the desperate defense of the city hall by Ignacio, the old-time Peronista m a y o r , and a handful of policemen, against a larger, better-armed force. T h e climax of absurdity comes w h e n the m a y o r ' s "air f o r c e " (a crop-dusting plane) sprays the enemy with the only " a m m u n i t i o n " available, manure. T h e novel ends as the m a y o r and a corporal he has just promoted to sergeant, the only ones left to defend the city hall, prepare to receive the onslaught. In Cuarteles de invierno, Soriano returns to C o l o n i a V e l a but the action n o w takes place after the military c o u p has succeeded. A popular singer w h o has had problems with the regime and a has-been b o x e r are hired by the authorities to entertain the townspeople at a celebration in honor of the new order. Like Soriano and M a r l o w e in Triste, solitario y final and like Ignacio and Sergeant G a r c i a in No habrá más penas ni olvido, G a l v á n the singer and R o c h a the boxer end up supporting each other in an impossible situation. Soriano follows the same strategies in A sus plantas rendido un león in w h i c h the spurious Argentinian consul and the British ambassador to the Active African k i n g d o m Bongwutsi try to fight their version of the w a r over the F a l k l a n d / M a l v i n a s islands. T h e extreme loneliness of the protagonists caught in an absurd situation is only redeemed by moments of human solidarity. A n o t h e r significant development in the novels of the 1970s and 1980s is the greater representation of different sectors of society. T h e repertoire of familiar character types: dictators, revolutionaries, disaffected intellec tuals, and budding artists is expanded to include slum-dwellers, factory w o r k e r s , Jewish immigrants, M i d d l e Eastern immigrants, mailmen, maids, and h o m o s e x u a l s persecuted by right-wing and left-wing dictator ships. Some of these characters, of course, have appeared frequently enough in the literature of the past, but seldom, if ever, as the leading protagonists. In the t w o decades since 1970 the greater prominence of w o m e n 298



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novelists such as Isabel Allende (Chile, b . 1942), Elena P o n i a t o w s k a , and Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina, b . 1938), of Jewish/Spanish A m e r i c a n writers such as Isaac G o l d e m b e r g (Peru, b. 1945) and M a r i o Szichman (Argentina, b. 1945), and of a w h o l e generation of university-educated novelists w i t h a lower-middle-class or proletarian b a c k g r o u n d such as M e m p o Giardinelli, A n t o n i o Skarmeta (Chile, b . 1940), and O s v a l d o Soriano, and of h o m o s e x u a l writers such as R e i n a l d o Arenas ( C u b a , 1943-1990), M a n u e l Puig, and Severo Sarduy ( C u b a , 1 9 3 7 - 1 9 9 3 ) , w h o defy Spanish A m e r i c a n m a c h i s m o by writing openly about homosexuality in their novels, has resulted in a far less h o m o g e n o u s o u t l o o k than ever before. Unlike A l b e r t o Gerchunoff (Argentina, 1889-1950), w h o s e L o s gauchos judíos (1910) [The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas], written as part of Argentina's centennial celebration, presented an officially sanctioned account of the immigration of Eastern European Jews, more recent writers have sought to demythify the history of Jewish immigration to Spanish A m e r i c a and to recover a more truthful version of that experience (see Lindstrom Jewish Issues in Argentine Literature, and S o s n o w s k i , La orilla inminente). T h e novels of M a r i o Szichman and Isaac G o l d e m b e r g have opened n e w avenues for the critical examination of w h a t it means to be Jewish and Spanish A m e r i c a n . In his four novels: Crónica falsa, Los judíos del mar dulce, La verdadera crónica falsa, and A las 20:25 la señora entró en la inmortalidad [At 8:25, Evita Became Immortal] M a r i o Szichman renders a devastatingly demythifying view of Jewish immigration and assimilation by f o l l o w i n g the fortunes of the Active Pechof family from Russia to Argentina. A l t h o u g h the time frame of this anti-saga is from 1918 to the death of Eva Perón in 1952, the focus is on the Perón era. If the Perón era and the Pechof family are constants, there is more change than continuity in terms of style in Szichman's novels. Whereas Crónica falsa makes use of the documentary material in R o d o l f o W a l s h ' s Operation masacre concerning the execution of Peronistas on June 10, 1956, as the b a c k g r o u n d for the history of a Jewish family during the Perón years, in the subsequent novels the sociohistorical context, although present as a determining factor, is increasingly distorted through a cultivation of the grotesque and the absurd reminiscent of the novels of Samuel Beckett. T h e sanitized lyricism of Gerchunoff's novel is challenged not only by a p a r o d y of situations but linguistically by the scatological and hybrid language of the Pechofs. Szichman provides small glossaries to help readers w i t h the Pechofs' Yiddish-sprinkled Spanish, but they are left to 299



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their o w n devices w h e n it comes to deciphering each family member's personal linguistic idiosyncrasies and speech impediments. Scatology and the absurd reach their zenith (or perhaps nadir w o u l d be more appropriate) in A las 20:25 la señora entró en la inmortalidad, a novel w h i c h revolves around t w o unburied corpses: Eva Perón and Rifque Pechof. A n d it literally revolves because the novel's main premise is that all clocks stop at 8:25 p.m. and, day after day, everyone in Argentina is forced to relive the day Evita died. A l l the while Rifque floats in a bathtub full of formaldehyde because no death certificates can be filed until Eva Perón is buried. T h e family's attempt to adopt the habits and appearance of Christian Argentinian patricians is presented as one of many desperate strategems to get Rifque buried. Isaac G o l d e m b e r g ' s novels La vida a plazos de don Jacobo Lerner [The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner] and Tiempo al tiempo [Play by Play] add another twist to the Jewish/Spanish A m e r i c a n dilemma of identity and assimilation. T h e largely autobiographical novels tell a story of racism, religious discrimination, and culture shock. La vida a plazos de don jacobo Lerner is an account of the immigration of a Russian Jew, J a c o b o Lerner, to L i m a . By combining a realist narrative style (reminiscent of V a r g a s Llosa) w i t h the inclusion of other documents, principally newspaper clippings (in the manner of Puig), G o l d e m b e r g provides an account of Jewish immigration to Peru that is critical enough to have caused a scandal in L i m a ' s Jewish c o m m u n i t y . Efrain, J a c o b o ' s illegitimate son, abandoned in C h e p é n , furnishes the point of departure for Tiempo al tiempo, but in this second novel his name is M a r c o s Karushansky. T h e eight-year-old b o y , w h o has been raised in his Peruvian mother's house as a C a t h o l i c , is s u m m o n e d by his father to L i m a w h e r e he is suddenly expected to acquire a Jewish identity. M a r c o s ' s identity crisis is underscored by the treatment he receives in the schools he attends. In L e ó n Pinelo, the Jewish school he first attends, his classmates call him " e l c h o l o " (the Indian) and later at the L e o n c i o Prado military school he is k n o w n as "the J e w . " Despite the novel's serious subject matter, G o l d e m b e r g totally avoids pathos and melodrama through several ironical devices. T h e clever blend of different narrative points of view (former classmates from either school), and the intercalation of these " s t r a i g h t " chapters w i t h others where a sports announcer narrates M a r c o s ' s life in terms of a soccer g a m e between Peru and Brazil, constantly change the ground under the reader's feet and give a vicarious taste of M a r c o s ' s bewilderment. A l t h o u g h w o m e n novelists like R o s a r i o Ferré, Cristina Peri-Rossi, M a r í a Luisa Puga, Reina Roffé, and Luisa V a l e n z u e l a , a m o n g many others, have achieved national and international recognition, the only one w h o has 300 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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matched the sales records and celebrity status of the writers of the Boom is Isabel Allende (Chile, b . 1942). Her three novels La casa de los espíritus [The House of the Spirits], De amor y de sombra [Of Love and Shadows], and Eva Luna [Eva Luna] describe a trajectory that in many w a y s reproduces the evolution of the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel since 1 9 7 5 . La casa de los espíritus l o o k s both back and f o r w a r d . Despite its undeniable filiation w i t h G a r c í a M á r q u e z ' s Cien años de soledad, it is a mistake to follow the critics w h o have dismissed this w o r k , because it fruitfully points the w a y in t w o new directions. First, the importance of w o m e n in the w o r k of G a r c í a M á r q u e z notwithstanding, Allende's b o o k makes a major contribution simply by being a w o m a n ' s mythification of w o m e n . Second, the b o o k does not remain grounded in its derivative M a g i c a l Realism but, unlike its predecessor, ends in a starkly realistic mode. If w o m e n w i t h green hair and p o w e r s of clairvoyance people the early pages of the novel, the latter pages tackle issues of guilt, political irresponsibility, and brutal repression. De amor y de sombra, centered as it is on the discovery by a politically naive female reporter of a mass grave of the victims of Pinochet's repression is the logical continuation of the end of La casa de los espíritus. T h e fact that the b o o k ends in an almost romance m o d e is explained by Allende's belief (in this she, like many of her contemporaries, sides w i t h Puig) that popular literary genres can serve means other than escapist entertainment. Eva Luna, the picaresque adventures of a lower-class girl trying to m a k e her w a y in the w o r l d , is in fact a type of soap opera but with a major difference: Allende breaks w i t h clichés and takes her characters seriously. She invests the character of Eva L u n a w i t h a dignity that is totally alien to the stock character of Spanish A m e r i c a n soap operas, the country girl w h o becomes a maid in the big city and is soon seduced by her male employers. Eva Luna may have enough elements of wishful thinking to garner the label of a "feminist f a b l e " but as the double ending of the novel makes clear (the reader is actually given a choice between a happy and an unhappy ending) it is a consciously fashioned fable, a fable that takes itself seriously, but not all of the time. In Spanish A m e r i c a n letters the Post-Boom represents the crisis o f modernity c o m m o n l y called " P o s t m o d e r n i t y . " A l t h o u g h the suggestion that the Boom corresponds to M o d e r n i s m and the Post-Boom to Postmodernism is strictly untenable, if only because the Boom occurred historically in the postmodern era, the crisis of the Boom does reflect that of modernity. T h e major writers of the Boom and a younger generation of Spanish A m e r i c a n writers realized that the aesthetic paradigm of the A v a n t - G a r d e had been taken as far as it w o u l d g o and they discarded it in 301 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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favor of a variety of approaches w h o s e c o m m o n links are greater accessibility and a relationship to the past based more on a dialogue with history than w i t h myth. A s a result a strange p h e n o m e n o n has arisen: a postlapsarian attitude a m o n g critics and academics accustomed to the modernist paradigm of the novel. T h e temptation to measure Post-Boom writers by the aesthetics and ethics of the Boom needs to be resisted. T h e Spanish A m e r i c a n novel from 1975 to the present demonstrates a bewildering variety and richness. T h e Post-Boom is not a Bust.


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Spanish American poetry from 1922 to 1975 José Quiroga

Introduction T h e space where language becomes poetry is the zone explored by the voices of the twentieth century poetic tradition. Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry in the period from 1922 until 1975 a l l o w s us to see texts written in the classical m o d e or in open defiance of it, using a silent, visual language or one that is twisted into beat syncopation. Expression is colloquial, intimate, populist, and baroque. Poets gaze at figurines in museums, or describe the outlines of a r o o m and the shape of a body; they invent bodies and populate imaginary cities, or w a l k in their cities and transform them into mythical realms. Poems take place in Burma and R a n g o o n or in the suburbs of Buenos Aires; they illuminate personal chaos and impersonal order, they question the social order or assert the hidden order of things. T h e debate on the role of the p o e m , or of the poet, in the modern w o r l d , continues, even after the death of poetry is proclaimed in angry manifestos. General histories of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry have divided this period into three: a period of radical and violent experimentation from 1922 to about 1940, one concerned with the search for A m e r i c a n or national cultures that spans the years from 1940 to i960, followed by a second experimental period that starts from i960 and lasts until around 1 9 7 5 . T h e historical markers fall more or less into place if w e consider t w o pivotal events: the Spanish Civil W a r from 1936 to 1939, and the triumph of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n in 1959. T h e years between these t w o events form the core of a period of temporary retrenchment, w h e n Spanish Americans turned i n w a r d after the more violent ruptures of the 1920s. In relation to European history, the years that followed the First W o r l d W a r find Spanish A m e r i c a n s immersed in the polemics of the A v a n t - G a r d e ; the effects of the Second W o r l d W a r are signaled by various projects of national or Pan-American aesthetics. Y e t , more than these, it w a s the 303



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conflict in Spain and the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n that shaped writers and their aesthetics in very concrete w a y s , some of w h i c h will be discussed during the course of this essay. T h e critical discourse on Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry defines these changes in poetry as cyclical modes within the fabric of the tradition, where a continuing search for specifically Spanish A m e r i c a n cultural traits is underscored more or less at different times. T h e historical A v a n t - G a r d e s culminated in the search for national or A m e r i c a n specifici ties within the more political setting of the 1940s; a renewed sense of nationality brought about by the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n , joined w i t h the fact that at least t w o generations of poets coexist in the 1960s (those established by 1940 and others starting to write in the 1960s), frames a n e w and polemical beginning that takes us to the present time. T h e s e general lines of development need to be supplemented and refined by a third - namely, the gradual abandoning of national traditions in favor of a more trans-national, cosmopolitan, or generally Spanish A m e r i c a n continental poetry. " T h e r e is no Argentine, M e x i c a n or Venezuelan poetry: there is a Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry or, to be more exact, a Spanish A m e r i c a n tradition and s t y l e " says O c t a v i o Paz in Poesia en movimiento (p. 4). Readers of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry may find similar issues in the many modes and registers of Pablo N e r u d a , in the baroque profusion of a deeply national C u b a n poet such as Jose L e z a m a L i m a , in the more cosmopolitan O c t a v i o Paz, in the guerrilla poems of R o q u e D a l t o n , or in the N i c a r a g u a n vistas of Pablo A n t o n i o C u a d r a . T h i s Pan-American poetic c o m m u n i c a t i o n is the most direct link that twentieth-century poetry has to Modernismo [Modernism]. Since Moder nismo, poets have translated other cultures into Spanish A m e r i c a ' s and explained Spanish Americans to themselves. Even if they rejected every central stylistic tenet of Modernismo, the A v a n t - G a r d e [Vanguardia] continued the w o r k of their precursors by repeating its expansive and continental desires. T h i s is at the core of the A v a n t - G a r d e ' s ambivalent attitude to Modernismo, although it could also be seen as a critical act vis a-vis their precursors: the Vanguardia eliminated the rhetoric but contin ued the p r o g r a m . T h e possibility of a unified aesthetics charged the A v a n t G a r d e to follow the modernista e x a m p l e by trying to unify different national voices. It is this p r o g r a m w h i c h explains the surprising unity of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry, in spite of the different and contradictory manifestos. For the central argument of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry in this period has been, as in Modernismo, a debate as to the shape, outline, and contours of modernity. A l l aesthetic and political positions from 1920 to 1975 can be seen as competing versions of a central, yet elusive, narrative that is framed within the encounter of Spanish A m e r i c a w i t h the modern age. T h e responses to modernity imply questions as to whether poetry serves the 304


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social or the personal order, whether it uses colloquial or erudite language, or whether it privileges metaphor or communication. Poetry frames all issues relating to the relationship between poetry, language, and history. History itself appears not only where poetry is meant to serve the greater social order, but even in movements that deliberately turn their back on contemporary political situations, like the C u b a n Orígenes, or the M e x i c a n Contemporáneos. It is the place of the p o e m and the poet within a historical way of understanding history that gives Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry its more visible structural principle. Because the presence of history is so central to the tradition, the notion of generational change that O c t a v i o Paz has explored in his classic Los hijos del limo [Children of the Mire] becomes an apt model that explains the different cycles of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry. A c c o r d i n g to Paz, modern poetry is a battle of continuity and rupture w a g e d from one generation of writers to the next. T h e inheritors of Modernismo waged revisionist battles against their precursors, first w i t h Post-modernistas like L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s , Enrique G o n z á l e z M a r t í n e z , and Gabriela M i s tral, and then through the first generation of the A v a n t - G a r d e (Vicente H u i d o b r o and O l i v e r i o G i r o n d o ) , f o l l o w e d by a later generation that comprises N i c o l á s Guillen, X a v i e r Villaurrutia, Pablo N e r u d a , and O c t a v i o Paz. H o w e v e r , this model may be more valid for Paz's generation itself than for the ones that follow him. After 1940, and even more so after i960, the narrative of generational change collapses, the boundaries between generations blurred because of the continuing presence of major poets like José L e z a m a L i m a , Pablo N e r u d a , O c t a v i o Paz, and Jorge Luis Borges during the 1960s and early 1970s, signaling the consolidation of at least t w o generations in the period that coincides w i t h the Boom of Spanish A m e r i c a n narrative. Spanish A m e r i c a n poems from the 1920s to the 1970s change in time, they are in a constant state of metamorphosis. M o d e r n i t y ' s emphasis on language and on the poet as critic has shaped p o e m s into precarious signifying structures that are constantly subjected to revisions and rewriting. T h e s e may range from a single c o m m a , to a change in the line breaks or the typographical arrangement of verse, to a complete rewriting of the p o e m itself. Jorge Luis Borges's first published w o r k s , Fervor de Buenos Aires, Luna de enfrente, and Cuaderno San Martin are reissued after 1940 w i t h layers of revisions and rewriting. T h e s e take place within a tradition w h e r e , since M a l l a r m é ' s Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard (1895) [Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance], a p o e m ' s meaning entails not only the signifiers themselves, but the arrangement of the signifiers on the page. A v a n t - g a r d e poetry cannot be understood unless these revisions take into account the different readings opened up by the position of those same signifiers. For e x a m p l e , Vicente H u i d o b r o ' s 305


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poems from El espejo de agua (1916) [The Mirror of Water] are fundamentally different from his translation of those same p o e m s into French w i t h a new typographical arrangement a year later in Horizon carré (1917) [Square Horizon], T h e first is still a post-modernist a b o o k ; the second is fully an avant-garde text, and the experience of reading one is not the same as that of reading the other. T h e first Spanish A m e r i c a n avant-garde p o e m s are eminently visual texts, and as such they are subject to a kind of afterlife, to an interplay between an original text and its reproduction. T h i s tradition culminates in O c t a v i o Paz's prefaces to all editions of Blanco [Blanco], In these, Paz reminds his readers of the p o e m ' s original edition, w h e r e the pages w o u l d appear in unnumbered progression like a T i b e t a n script, w i t h the characters written in ink of different colors. W h i l e reminding us of the original, Paz's prefatory gesture also underscores that poetry is a continual transformation, a l w a y s in a "perpetual present" about w h i c h Paz himself speaks in Viento entero ["Wind from all C o m p a s s Points"]. M o d e r n i t y has liberated poetry but has also condemned p o e m s to a fragmentary and exiled existence. Published in c h a p - b o o k s that are sometimes visually designed by the authors themselves, poems are residents of a b o o k but citizens of none. T h e y belong in collections that are " b o o k s of p o e m s , " an organizational structure that has been developed either by the poets themselves or other compilers. T h e definite contours of these b o o k s of poems appear in the modern age w i t h Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal [Flowers of Evil] and W h i t m a n ' s Leaves of Grass. Spanish A m e r i c a n p o e m s of this century hold allegiance to the double origin signaled by these literary fathers. T h e r e may be thematic and stylistic unity on the one hand, and on the other a conceptual will: O c t a v i o Paz collects most of his prose p o e m s in ¿Águila о sol? [Eagle or Sun?], whereas José L e z a m a L i m a publishes the heterogeneous Enemigo rumor, where both formal and thematic unities are present in different sections. T h e Chilean Pablo N e r u d a has been called fundamentally a poet of b o o k s , and his collections strive for the unity of form and content under the guise of a narrative, as in his Canto general [Canto General], or that of a c o m m o n form w i t h a multiplicity of objects, as in the various collections of his Odas elementales, Nuevas odas elementales, or Tercer libro de las odas. In a similar vein, but more attuned to conceptual rather than formal organization, the Argentinian R o b e r t o Juárroz since 1963 has written over seven b o o k s of p o e m s under the title Poesía vertical [Vertical Poetry]. In his second, third, and fourth "poesía vertical" (1963, 1965, 1969) each collection consists of a series of sequentially numbered p o e m s . W h e n collected in an anthology - Poesía vertical, 1958-1975 {1976) - the poet starts a n e w his numerical sequence. A l t h o u g h the titles of the b o o k s might 306



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be repeated, the numbers by means of w h i c h the p o e m s are recognized change from one collection to the other. T h e b o o k of poems as a modern creation w o r k s in Spanish A m e r i c a under the principles of unity within difference, of a centrifugal force, signaled by its title, that tempers the centripetal impulse of the poetic fragments, as in L e z a m a L i m a ' s aptly named Fragmentos a su imán. Oliverio G i r o n d o ' s Veinte poemas para ser leídos en tranvía (1922) is structured according to the same unity of time and place as Heberto Padilla's Fuera del juego, but they are both different from R u b é n D a r i o ' s Cantos de vida y esperanza, both in their structure and in their aims. B o o k s of poetry a l l o w for poets' perverse games w i t h their critics or historians. T h e five editions of O c t a v i o Paz's Libertad bajo palabra are a labyrinth of textual tampering, of exclusions and inclusions. T h e papers that César Valle jo left for posterity have been collected under three different titles, " N o m i n a de h u e s o s , " " P o e m a s h u m a n o s , " and, more recently, " P o e m a s de Paris," that belie a critical desire for order by their editors. N o a m o u n t of praise can withstand the modern poet as internal critic of his or her w o r k . A particularly salient example is that of the C u b a n poet C i n t i o Vitier, w h o in 1938 collects fifty poems in his first b o o k , Luz ya sueño, with comments by José M a r í a C h a c ó n y C a l v o and Juan R a m ó n Jiménez. W h e n Vitier assembles all of his collections under the title Vísperas in 1953, w e find a very different version of his first b o o k . Attentive readers will pursue the matter one page before the table of contents, where they are informed that p o e m s from Luz ya sueño preceded by an asterisk have not been published. W i t h the exception of t w o p o e m s ( " C a n c i ó n " and " O t r o " ) , all of the texts that w e r e supposed to have been published in 1938 are actually n e w texts. T h i s Borgesian g a m e w i t h texts and history continues in Vitier's Antología poética. Here one finds " E l convaleciente" and other p o e m s that seem to have been taken from Luz ya sueño, yet did not appear in that b o o k , but instead in the one invented as the source in 1953. A p o e m is an essentially unstable text, and its fundamental lack of closure is the key to its history. W h a t Spanish A m e r i c a n poets point out w i t h this constant shifting within the text is the p a r a d o x i c a l place of the p o e m within modernity and historical time, and the critical relationship it has to its creator. Because the p o e m is an overdetermined verbal construction that changes in time, it is also the mask or the revelation of the self, the particular site where an " I " is also historically grounded. A s G u i l l e r m o Sucre has pointed out, w h e n p o e m s transparently reveal the mask of their creators, it is the poet as an image that is offered to the readers. T h e poetic " p e r s o n a e " of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry are inherited from 307



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sources as varied as R a l p h W a l d o Emerson, Charles Baudelaire, W a l t W h i t m a n , Friedrich Nietzsche, and Stephane M a l l a r m é . T h e i r influence can be found all across the spectrum of twentieth-century Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry. F r o m Emerson and W h i t m a n , Spanish A m e r i c a n s received a p r o g r a m for A m e r i c a n poetry; translations of Nietzsche into Spanish accentuated the idea of poet as O v e r m a n ; Baudelaire offered them the tools from w h i c h to construct a n e w critical poetry, and M a l l a r m é a sense o f the ritual mystery of language. Obscurity of language and transparency of means; concern w i t h form and design over meaning, or an aesthetics defined by social responsibility; historical participation by means of armed struggle, or historical participation by means of a negation of history - this confused inheritance is at the root of the tensions of this period. T h e translation of the (French) Symbolist tradition by the Modernistas included Emerson's idea that the poet is the maker of w o r d s , and that language is the tool of the maker, as elaborated in his seminal essay " T h e P o e t . " Emerson appears quoted in the preface of one of Vicente H u i d o b r o ' s earliest b o o k s , Adán (1916), and reappears as an ideal in Borges's El hacedor. T h i s Emersonian strain is inseparable from its projection onto W h i t m a n , and most of the earliest poetry of the twentieth century follows a real or imagined b o d y that emanates from the author of Leaves of Grass. If Marinetti or Breton in Europe identified themselves as emblems of Futurism or Surrealism, every Spanish A m e r i c a n poet w h o initiated or belonged to a m o v e m e n t also w a n t e d to be, in some w a y , representative of an A m e r i c a n aesthetics. T h i s is as true of H u i d o b r o as it is of Gabriela Mistral. A l t h o u g h Mistral may not have defined her poetry under any manifesto, it w a s nevertheless her figure as poet that came to stand for the voice of Spanish A m e r i c a n w o m e n . Likewise, O c t a v i o Paz is not associated w i t h a particular m o v e m e n t but is representative of M e x i c o itself or of the voracious culture of the Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectual - a historically created p h e n o m e n o n . T h e interplay between Emerson and W h i t m a n on the one side, and M a l l a r m é on the other, gives Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry a distinctive place within modernity. Even in moments w h e n the poetic language of the A v a n t - G a r d e w a s more hostile to a " c o m m u n i c a t i v e " function, it never lost the belief in the poet as the great c o m m u n i c a t o r , as can be seen in the desire to make of the poet a representative e x a m p l e of A m e r i c a itself. T h e figure that best exemplifies this voice is of course Pablo N e r u d a . Y e t it could be argued that N e r u d a himself is the product - if not the a p e x - of a tradition w h o s e twentieth-century origins are found in D a r i o ' s critique of Marinetti's Futurism (1912), copied by Vicente H u i d o b r o and included by the latter in a collection of essays titled Pasando y pasando (1914). Both D a r í o and H u i d o b r o objected to Marinetti's dictum that the avant-garde poet had to abolish the " I . " For D a r í o , this loss entailed agony; for 308 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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H u i d o b r o , a threat to the poet's personality. F r o m this point on, Spanish A m e r i c a n s never quite abandon the discourse of poetic personality, or the claims to the vates tradition. In spite of the subsequent claims of other Vanguardistas on the independence of the image and, consequently, of poetic language, Spanish A m e r i c a n poets, from Gabriela Mistral to Pablo A n t o n i o C u a d r a and Ernesto C a r d e n a l , have refused to abandon Shelley's dictum that poets are the "hidden legislators of the w o r l d . " T h e other version of modernity, the one inherited from M a l l a r m é , demands close attention to language as incantatory ritual. W h i l e Spanish A m e r i c a n poets read their W h i t m a n , they never forgot their M a l l a r m é , and the most important p o e m s of the tradition tell of a process of askesis or purgation where subjects inscribe themselves into language and in the process lose their self within the atemporality of inscription. T h i s loss is the theme of H u i d o b r o ' s Altazor, G o r o s t i z a ' s Muerte sin fin [Death Without End], N e r u d a ' s " A l t u r a s de M a c c h u P i c c h u " ["Heights of M a c c h u P i c c h u " ] , and O c t a v i o Paz's Blanco. Even at its most M a l l a r mean, Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry can formally reject the voice of W h i t m a n but can never truly abandon it. Whether poetry w o r k s by means of a progressive overloading of elements ["hinchazón y absorción de element o s " ] , as N e r u d a classified the method of his Residencia en la tierra [Residence on Earth] and as w o u l d be f o l l o w e d by the neo-baroque aesthetics of José L e z a m a L i m a , or by a return to a less oratorical m o d e as can be seen in the poetry of Ernesto C a r d e n a l or H e b e r t o Padilla, the d a i m o n of W h i t m a n is an indelible presence, the loss of the poetic " I " t o o high a price to pay, more often than not at the cost of producing an agony that can be seen in César Vallejo or in R o s a r i o Castellanos. José L e z a m a L i m a ' s final disappearance into the v o i d that he named the tokonoma in Fragmentos a su imán closes this cycle of our modernity w i t h a final adieu to the agonies of the " I " : De pronto, recuerdo, con las uñas voy abriendo el tokonoma en la pared. Necesito un pequeño vacío, allí me voy reduciendo para reaparecer de nuevo, palparme y poner la frente en su lugar. Un pequeño vacío en la pared. (Poesía completa, 547) [All of a sudden, I remember, with my nails I am opening the tokonoma in the wall I need a small void, 309 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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there I am reducing myself in order to reappear again, feel myself and put my forehead in its place. A small void on the wall.] L e z a m a incorporates himself as image into a space that is invisible and everpresent, where he can, as he says, converse in the streets of A l e x a n d r i a or a m o n g imaginary beings while s w i m m i n g on a beach. A l t h o u g h L e z a m a here abandons the overloaded style of his baroque p o e m s , it is precisely the simplicity of the act that accounts for its particular density. L e z a m a ' s poetic oeuvre ends w i t h the integration of the writer into w o r d s . T h i s is the same desire manifested by most major poets in the tradition. T h e tokonoma is the threshold of H u i d o b r o ' s Altazor, it is also the end of G i r o n d o ' s experimentations w i t h language in En la masmédula. It reappears in Borges's story " E l A l e p h " as a space w h i c h is everywhere and n o w h e r e at the same time. " E l A l e p h , " as Enrico M a r i o Santi has pointed out in " T h e Accidental T o u r i s t " , is framed as a debate between Borges and a poet that sounds surprisingly like N e r u d a or, at least, a bad imitation of W h i t m a n . L e z a m a ' s p o e m closes this period of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry, and it does so within the historical scene of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n , at the point in w h i c h poetry has b e c o m e the unmediated expression of Utopian possibili ties, w h e r e the poet disappears into the collective self. T h e voice that is closest to L e z a m a ' s in this p o e m is that of N i c o l á s Guillen's Tengo, and in both w o r k s individual poets merge w i t h a process that is larger than their o w n individual selves. Tengo is the "other s i d e " of L e z a m a ' s project, not its contradiction. T h e tradition that is initiated by Vicente H u i d o b r o ' s El espejo de agua is closed by Fragmentos a su imán. T h i s magnet ("imán") in L e z a m a ' s b o o k is the elusive origin and end that can never be achieved, a dense closure to a tradition that has questioned origin and originality in order to search for the keys to its modernity. W h e n Vicente H u i d o b r o presented the second edition of a small c h a p - b o o k entitled El espejo de agua (1916) to the Spanish vanguardist poets in M a d r i d , they accused him of falsifying his o w n preeminence in discovering and experimenting w i t h poetry by printing, in 1 9 1 7 , a false second edition of a b o o k that they said did not exist prior to that second edition. It w a s the copy that made all poets doubt the existence of the original. It is w i t h this c o p y that the history of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry in the twentieth century begins. In w h a t follows, I will center the initial aspects of this history within w h a t w e m a y call the master narrative of the Poet as it is inherited from Modernismo, and as it shapes the particularities of the Spanish A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e . It is impossible to encompass all of the b o o k s by the major 310



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poets in the tradition. I have focused on particular authors and pivotal groups in order to proceed from these t o w a r d a more comprehensive overview. It is generally agreed that the major figures that cannot g o unnamed are Vicente H u i d o b r o , Jorge Luis Borges, César Vallejo, Pablo N e r u d a , and O c t a v i o Paz, named the " f o u n d a t i o n a l " generation by critics like Y u r k i e v i c h {Fundadores de la nueva poesía latinoamericana). With the exception of Vallejo and H u i d o b r o , these have been a constant living presence throughout the century. It is possible to trace the development of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry simply by taking into account the multiple variations within the texts of these authors. H o w e v e r , this w o u l d be done at the expense of other, singular voices that feed from and into the poetry of these founders. It is better then, to keep a loose chronological arrangement as the aesthetic debates proceed throughout these decades. W h a t I am attempting to d o here is less a solid narrative construction than a focus on a series of recurring problems that shape Spanish A m e r i c a n poetic discourse up to the present.

Projects

of

modernity

T h e consolidation of the Spanish A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e takes place in the 1920s. W h i l e Borges published in Argentina his first b o o k of p o e m s , Fervor de Buenos Aires, César Vallejo tore apart the syntax and format of the Spanish language in Trilce, and O l i v e r i o G i r o n d o mixed poetry and prose in Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía (1922). T h e s e more experimental writers share the literary space of others w h o were still shedding the last remnants of Post-modernismo [Postmodernism]: Gabriela Mistral published her romantic lyrics of Desolation in 1922, and Pablo N e r u d a w r o t e post-symbolist verses in Crepusculario. By 1925, Vallejo w a s already condemning the A v a n t - G a r d e and calling on poets to search for a new poetic expression in the continent, while Luis Palés M a t o s prefigured a second stage of the A v a n t - G a r d e in the A f r o C a r i b b e a n p o e m " P u e b l o n e g r o " (1925). In the beginning of this period, the innovations of Simplismo or Estridentismo - h o m e g r o w n varieties of the European A v a n t - G a r d e s - coexisted with a more " t e m p e r e d " literary expression, but also w i t h a debate as to the particular contribution of Spanish A m e r i c a to the A v a n t - G a r d e that continues after Vallejo. T h i s secopd m o m e n t of the A v a n t - G a r d e lasts until the end of the Spanish Civil War! T h e t w o most important movements of the Spanish A m e r i c a n A v a n t G a r d e are Creacionismo, associated w i t h Vicente H u i d o b r o (1893-1948), and Ultraísmo [Ultraism], the w o r k of Jorge Luis Borges and G u i l l e r m o de T o r r e . Both of these movements had a Utopian vision of language 311



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centered on the poetic image and on an overvaluation of metaphor. Ultraísmo w a n t e d to g o beyond the received notions of language as representation, and Creacionismo sought a language that w o u l d re arrange empirical reality in order to fashion a poetic object. O f the t w o , Creacionismo is chronologically the first comprehensive articulation of an avant-garde poetics, and it framed the debate on poetry in Spanish A m e r i c a as a literary reflection on the relationship between poet and language, and language and empirical reality. A s a result of the particular kind of C u b i s m H u i d o b r o encountered in Paris in 1 9 1 7 , his language constantly referred to the localization of objects in the typographical space of the page, and to the depiction of an object and its place in a representational surface. Like the still lifes of Juan Gris (one of H u i d o b r o ' s first colleagues in Paris), H u i d o b r o ' s poetry is charged with the sudden flash of inspiration. H u i d o b r o ' s first creacionista poems were meditations on the visual character of the page: short poems of El espejo de agua, translated into French as Horizon carré, where the page w a s a space of play for signifiers. T h e poems signaled a new poetry that abandoned the Modernistas' emphasis on rhythm for a more plastic vision of poetic language. T h i s same procedure w a s inaugurated by H u i d o b r o himself in Canciones en la noche (1913), by Apollinaire's Calligrammes (1918), and, quite independently of the t w o , by the M e x i c a n José Juan T a b l a d a in his Li-?o y otros poemas (1920). In longer poems like Ecuatorial (1918), H u i d o b r o elaborated on this poetics of space in order to reflect the dismemberment of subject and language as a result of the First W o r l d W a r . In his h o m a g e to R o b e r t D e l a u n a y ' s paintings, Tour Eiffel (1918), H u i d o b r o tried to bridge the gaps between literary and pictorial C u b i s m . T h r o u g h o u t the late teens and early 1920s, H u i d o b r o p r o m o t e d himself and his poetry both in Europe and in Latin A m e r i c a . A skillful manipu lator of the cultural marketplace, the impact of his writings is directly related to his presence in the poetic discourse of the time, since it is to H u i d o b r o ' s personal polemics and vendettas that w e o w e much of the elaboration of the theories of Creacionismo [Creationism]. A l t h o u g h there is still open debate as to the relevance of these theories for an understanding of H u i d o b r o ' s poetry, the fact is that since 1924 they were elaborated in part because of his efforts to distinguish himself from competing movements. For e x a m p l e , his Manifestes are published in French mainly as a response to Breton's Surrealism. H u i d o b r o here argues for a kind of poetry that is precisely the opposite of Surrealism, one in w h i c h the poet controls all the elements, metaphors, and design that c o m p o s e the p o e m , in order to create a new fact of N a t u r e . H u i d o b r o asserts that this vision of the poet as a magician of language, capable of 312


Spanish American poetry: 1922-1975 conjuring new realities by virtue of their appearance on the page, is a return to the true foundations of poetry as incantatory, magical language. T h e "objective f a c t s " of N a t u r e are filtered through the poet into " n e w facts" of N a t u r e that do not imitate the external character, but rather the operations, of N a t u r e . Manifestes arrived too late to m a k e a considerable impact in the marketplace for competing literary programs in the mid-iQ2os. H u i d o bro's collection has the appearance of a final s w a n song to the aesthetics of Creacionismo, although the poet never renounced his literary vision. By 1926, not only had Spanish A m e r i c a adopted various individual credos of poetic experimentation in a dizzying array of movements, but Surrealism had by then taken center stage in European literary circles. Aesthetic discourse in Spanish A m e r i c a w a s shifting t o w a r d a more politically committed art, one that participated in a wider search for an "authenti c i t y " inherited from Surrealism itself. H u i d o b r o ' s riposte to the changing face of the A v a n t - G a r d e w a s his most important text, Altazor, o el viaje en paracaidas [Altazor or a Voyage in Parachute], a long p o e m in seven cantos where the relationship between poet, language, and p o e m is examined by gradually dissecting, or deconstructing, the links of this chain. Altazor is perhaps the most transgressive poetic text of this period in Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. Its main character (Altazor) is a composite w o r d : alto (high), azor (hawk), a fitting emblem for a p o e m where H u i d o b r o has language itself undergo countless permutations. By framing a central event - the fall of the celestial v o y a g e r A l t a z o r - into a series of cantos, H u i d o b r o plays with our notion of logical and progressive continuities. T h e reader may follow this general plot in the preface and in the first and second cantos, but after C a n t o in it is obvious that H u i d o b r o retains only the barest outlines of the plot and hides the celestial v o y a g e r in a sea of w o r d s . A l t a z o r becomes language thinking of itself and purging itself of its rhetorical mechanisms. For H u i d o b r o , language must first destroy in order to create, and these acts of violence reach their c o m p u l sive frenzy in C a n t o v , where the essence of language is projected into N a t u r e , and where a series of over a hundred lines plays w i t h various combinations added to the w o r d " w i n d m i l l . " In H u i d o b r o ' s system, language inhabits all objects of N a t u r e , and the poet seeks to uncover the hidden code of a genetic and generative linguistics that nature uses in order to create. In Altazor, this code is at the same time veiled and revealed, but a l w a y s beyond naming. T h e p o e m can only point out the m o m e n t in w h i c h this language is born, for it is impossible for language as it is presently understood to be and not to name. It can only name itself by pointing in the direction of the tight and hermetic signifiers of the last t w o 313



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cantos, where the reader stands at a threshold that can only be crossed by silence. T h e s e typographical markers at the end of the p o e m foreshadow a n e w language: Io ia iiio Ai a i ai a i i i i o ia (Obras completas, i: 437) It is this conclusion to the p o e m that has baffled critics, declaring H u i d o b r o ' s linguistic adventure either the poet's acceptance of his project's failure or, like O c t a v i o Paz in " D e c i r sin decir," the index of a Pyrrhic victory. T h e fact that Altazor w a s elaborated over a period of twelve years (from 1 9 1 9 to 1931), and that H u i d o b r o himself remarked that it w a s in many w a y s a c o m p e n d i u m of his w h o l e w o r k , has prompted interpretations that seek to uncover in the p o e m a final statement on Creacionismo. H o w e v e r , this approach does not d o justice to the scope and importance of H u i d o b r o ' s p o e m . Altazor is the first sustained meditation on language by a long p o e m in the tradition, and it questions the tradition from a threshold that none had dared to cross. A t times o v e r w r o u g h t and frustrating, Altazor closes off the " h e r o i c " period of the Spanish A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e . It systematically assaults preconceptions of the use and abuse of language while it declares, at the same time, its unquestioned faith in the p o w e r of w o r d s . T h e polemical debates on poetry's social mission that were contemporaneous to, and that followed, Altazor's publication, seem to have no place within it. Some of these debates after 1925 were actually elaborated w i t h H u i d o b r o as a negative example of a poet w h o copied European art by paying no attention to his A m e r i c a n roots. From a different angle, it is impossible not to see H u i d o b r o ' s creationist aesthetics parodied by Borges's eminent creators of a surreptitious universe in " T l o n U q b a r , O r b i s T e r t i u s " (Ficciones, 1944). Borges's cabal is actually a vanguardist conspiracy that creates a universe and a language that belongs in Altazofs C a n t o v i . By creating a planet w h o s e existence is postulated solely by means of w o r d s , they seem to fiave found the key that leads past the final v o w e l s of Altazor. A s an example of a poet w h o s e w o r k w a s a sustained experimentation in the A v a n t - G a r d e , the Argentinian Oliverio G i r o n d o (1891-1967) needs to be included in the roster of Spanish A m e r i c a ' s more aesthetically defiant poets. His first b o o k Veinte poemas para ser leidos en el tranvia (1922) can be considered one of the central texts of the Spanish A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e . Originally published w i t h vignettes d r a w n by G i r o n d o himself, the b o o k is a utilitarian enterprise, the sign of a particularly cosmopolitan w a y of life: these are p o e m s to be read during a ride in the tram to w h i c h the reader is invited. Veinte poemas is the diary of a 3i4 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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traveller but, unlike a diary, it is not c o m p o s e d as a linear journey to different places in a continuous m o d e . T h e p o e m s are dated and assem bled according to the principles of Cubist montage (Schwartz, Homenaje a Girondo), deliberately breaking up a narrative line. T h e reader is invited to an instantaneous perception of the multiple locales where this poetry takes place: Paris, Brest, R i o de Janeiro, and others. Here, as in his second b o o k , Calcomanías, G i r o n d o writes in verse and in paragraph form of the instantaneous perception of objects that appear as if a l w a y s in an eternal present in the text itself. T h e p o e m s are actually plans, projects, " e s b o z o s , " designs that seem to possess no ulterior motive or finality. Whereas H u i d o b r o ' s influence in the more local national scenes during the initial years of the A v a n t - G a r d e w a s limited because of the fact that he chose to remain in Paris, both G i r o n d o and Borges t o o k center stage in the Argentinian avant-garde circles. G i r o n d o avoided the fractious polemics of his Chilean contemporary, and in 1925 contributed w i t h an irreverent manifesto to the Argentinian review Martín Fierro (1924-1927), to w h i c h he w a s a kind of intellectual mentor. For the next thirty years, between 1925 and 1956, G i r o n d o continued his experimentations with language, culminating in En la masmédula, his most important b o o k . G i r o n d o ' s poetic development is unique, separated from the traditional currents of Latin A m e r i c a n poetry, w h i c h in general lines retracted from a linguistic experimentation w h i c h G i r o n d o himself never abandoned. In this w a y , he serves as a link between the first A v a n t - G a r d e and the second period of experimentation inaugurated in the 1960s. F r o m Veinte poemas to Espantapájaros to En la masmédula, G i r o n d o ' s experiments w i t h language fall into three distinct moments. In the first, a visual and a verbal code complement each other, w o r d s and images point to an external referent. In the second stage of his linguistic journey, G i r o n d o incorpor ates the visual to the verbal, as in the calligram or visual p o e m that illustrates the title w o r d of his collection Espantapájaros. In the third and most important stage, G i r o n d o does w i t h o u t external meaning alto gether: his self-referential w o r d s prefigure the later Brazilian concrete poets. G i r o n d o makes of language its o w n object by shifting, from the interior landscape of the lyrical subject in its relationship to history, to an exploration of the internal mechanisms of w o r d s themselves. En la masmédula performs an act of violence to language that had only been seen in the last cantos of H u i d o b r o ' s Altazor. Using H u i d o b r o ' s pro cedure, G i r o n d o creates " p o r t m a n t e a u " w o r d s - combinations of signi fies like " A l t a z o r " or " m a s m é d u l a " ( " m o r e - t h a n - m a r r o w " ) . Y e t where H u i d o b r o in the last cantos of his masterpiece strips language d o w n to its bare elements, G i r o n d o ' s process of accumulation and juxtaposition of different w o r d s seems to prefigure a language of language, formed by 315 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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adhesive properties found in different linguistic signs. T h i s language ceases to possess a traditional lyrical " e m o t i v e n e s s " and addresses itself to the w o r d as such (Schwartz, Homenaje a Girondo). N o other major Spanish A m e r i c a n movement has f o l l o w e d G i r o n d o in an experimental project that is still an open proposition, a totally radical approach to language. If G i r o n d o is, throughout his life, involved in modernist experimen tation, Borges's w o r k takes place within and w i t h o u t the s h a d o w of the A v a n t - G a r d e . In this sense, the full extent of his original contributions can only be understood by appealing to ever wider nets of textual conspira cies. N o t only the A v a n t - G a r d e , but also his parodies on it, were carried over to his stories, p o e m s , and essays. Borges seems to relish these parodies, in a g a m e that points the reader a w a y from a particular text to exegetical explorations that need other texts. For e x a m p l e , in the prologue to a late collection of poetry, El otro, el mismo Borges recounts h o w he w a s asked in L u b b o c k , T e x a s , if the p o e m " T h e G o l e m " w a s a variation of his story " L a s ruinas circulares" ["The Circular R u i n s " ] . Borges responds that he had to "cross the w h o l e continent in order to receive that revelation, w h i c h w a s t r u e " (Obra poetica, 1923-1977,174). W i t h his customary self-effacement, Borges alerts readers to indulge in an interpretative operation where p o e m s and stories are variations of each other. His w o r k demands at times to be read by means of comparison and contrast. T h i s is particularly clear in poetry - the genre Borges favored at the beginning and at the end of his literary career. Borges's p o e m s could be seen as a rewriting of concerns that are also expressed in his narrative and in his essays - indeed some of them are stories told in a different w a y , formatted on the page as verse and, in later years, opting more and more for the traditional rigid constructions of the rhymed sonnet, perhaps because of his blindness. W h i l e Borges's stories have s p a w n e d legions of imitators, his poetry has not received the careful attention it deserves. T h i s is because the style of these p o e m s has little or nothing to d o w i t h that of his contemporaries. W i t h his peculiar classical rhetoric and the absence of the wilder metaphors found in poetry of the 1930s and 1940s, his poems seem oblivious to the stylistic changes that have prevailed in twentieth-century Spanish A m e r i c a n verse. In this sense, Borges has a l w a y s opted for the deliberate anachronism. His models have a l w a y s been clearly defined: Q u e v e d o , W h i t m a n , B r o w n i n g . H e never copies their style but interna lizes and re-reads them in his o w n manner, and it is this critical re-reading w h i c h makes his poetry inimitable. Borges begins his literary career with a b o o k of p o e m s , Fervor de Buenos Aires, the text of a flaneur w h o strolls around the city. T h e r e are recognized itineraries, like " L a R e c o l e t a , " " E l Jardin B o t a n i c o , " or " L a 316 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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plaza San M a r t i n " ; p o e m s dedicated to particularly Argentinian topics, like the card g a m e in " E l t r u c o , " or " L a guitarra," and " C a r n i c e r i a " ; and then p o e m s that signal h o w Borges's idea of space includes not only the real but also the imagined Buenos Aires, as in " B e n a r e s , " where the city is made into a w o r k of the imagination. Borges f o l l o w e d this collection w i t h Luna de enfrente and Cuaderno San Martin, where his meandering follows the same route: Buenos Aires transformed into a mythical construction, w i t h the occasional added element of exoticism like " A p u n tamiento de D a k a r . " T o a reader in 1923, Borges's b o o k s , written in a colloquial language, endeavoured to m a k e poetry out of an ordinary universe. T h e y dazzled the reader w i t h metaphor and emotion expressed in high registers, but also shocked those same readers by their use of Argentinian turns of phrase written in imitation of oral language. T h i s particular version of the A v a n t - G a r d e that is revealed in Borges's ultraist b o o k s underscores a fascination w i t h the local milieu, it searches for cosmopolitanism within the symbolic f r a m e w o r k of the traditional. Borges's Buenos Aires is not like the cities that G i r o n d o depicts in Veinte poemas, but one where the survival of ancient traditions offers a respite from the frenetic speed of modern life. T h i s adolescent Borges is lyrical and sentimental, his nostalgia is the theme of his b o o k s . O n l y after a long hiatus between 1929 and 1943 (during w h i c h he makes his incursions into the essayistic genre, culminating in the publication of Ficciones, perhaps one of the seminal b o o k s of twentieth-century prose), does Borges decide to g o back to his poetry. H o w e v e r , in Poemas 19221943, Borges collects a fundamentally revised poetic oeuvre. T h e revisions range from the elimination of most of the prologue of Fervor, the suppression of the one from Luna de enfrente, the complete recasting of the Argentinean orthography and general punctuation in Luna de enfrente, the elimination of complete p o e m s , and the almost total recasting of the ones that have been left. T h e act of polishing, writing, and rewriting his poetic w o r k s is repeated in 1954 w i t h Poemas 1923—1953, and then again in 1958, w i t h Poemas 1923-1958. A reader after 1958 w h o seeks to trace Borges's style as a poet will be disappointed by the lack of development from the first b o o k s to the last. Borges himself has w a r n e d his readers throughout these later decades against "the predictable monotonies, the repetition of w o r d s and perhaps of complete lines" (Obra poetica, 1923-19/7, 173). Borges's poetry seems to deny the fractured history of modernity. Paradoxically, it is this disfigurement that most powerfully situates Borges as Spanish A m e r i c a ' s most modern poet. G i v e n this almost complete rewriting of Borges's initial w o r k s , the first critical problem is one of accessibility to the production itself. In spite of the diligent search by scholars such as Z u n i l d a Gertel, G u i l l e r m o de 3i7


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T o r r e , G l o r i a Videla, and Linda S. M a i e r , w e d o not have the full output of Borges's literary w o r k . W h a t w e have, instead, is the critical revision that the poet has accomplished, one that has suppressed a considerable body of w o r k disseminated, between 1 9 1 9 and 1926, in Spanish literary journals like Alfar, Baleares, Cervantes, Cosmopolis, Grecia, Reflector, Revista de Occidente, Tableros, and Ultra. T h e s e texts consist, in the w o r d s of one critic, of "thirty p o e m s , three literary manifestoes, six annotated compilations of Spanish A m e r i c a n and G e r m a n expressionist poetry and prose, three essays on the metaphor and six miscellaneous articles" (Maier, " T h r e e ' N e w ' Avant-garde Poems of Jorge Luis Borges"). T h e y o u n g Borges writes of w a r and socialist ideology, and of the modern city w i t h its a c c o m p a n y i n g technological progress. H e creates neologisms and indulges in the irregular use of line breaks, he s h o w s a marked penchant for metaphorical surprise by forcing his readers to perceive strange and unaccustomed relations between objects. U n d o u b tedly, these c o m e out of Borges's debt to the G e r m a n Expressionists, w h o s e w o r k s he read while in Switzerland during the First W o r l d W a r . It w a s an aesthetic to w h i c h he w a s particularly d r a w n , collecting, translat ing, and introducing their w o r k s to Spanish and Spanish A m e r i c a n audiences. Borges's original texts seem to underscore, in a w a y that his revised texts d o not, his narrative of a literary career in the prologue to El otro, el mismo: " T h e fate of the writer is curious. Baroque in the beginning, vainly baroque, after a number of years he can achieve, if the stars are favorable, not simplicity, w h i c h is nothing, but a modest and secret c o m p l e x i t y " (Obra poetica, 1923-1977, 174). H o w e v e r , the fact that no trace of this development may be found in the collected v o l u m e of Borges's Obra poetica is precisely w h a t alerts the reader to the construc tions of Borges's poetics. It is in this realm of uninterrupted similarity that w e might find the key w i t h w h i c h to examine Borges's modernity. A l t h o u g h critics have generally read these revisions, suppressions, and additions as the result of Borges's renunciation of Ultraism in the late 1920s, a second reading clarifies the fact that Borges has in mind much more than a revisionary stance, and that he proceeds to organize his w o r k according to a particular notion of the B o o k , w h o s e model might be seen in W h i t m a n . Borges's Obra poetica is a central text to w h i c h various different texts are added, it is a labyrinth of sameness to w h i c h readers have access on many different levels. F r o m 1923 to i960, there are basically three b o o k s of p o e m s in constant metamorphosis. T h i s process of publication and recollection will continue after 1969, w h e n Borges at seventy re-publishes his first three b o o k s and re-reads them by adding n e w prologues and giving them a definitive form, but also as late as 1979, w h e n a n e w collection of Obra poetica is published w i t h new prologues, including one w h i c h serves as a general prologue for the rest of the w o r k . 318 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Spanish American poetry: 1922-1975 T h e B o o k , like W h i t m a n ' s Leaves of Grass, is a kind of encyclopedia of the writer, where different sections are independent of each other but have obsessively similar themes and a style that defies the notion of historical evolution. By means of carefully planned additions and deletions, Borges aimed to have his w o r k under the sign of atemporality. M o r e like W h i t m a n than many of his imitators, all of Borges's poems are written in a similar register, w i t h a deliberate m o n o t o n y that also recalls W h i t m a n ' s Leaves of Grass. T h e rhetorical trope that best describes Borges's poetry is the epiphoric: a repetition of sounds that Borges uses a b o v e all in his " A r t e p o é t i c a , " where the idea of progression is linked to the notion of repetition: Ver en la muerte el sueño, en el ocaso Un triste oro, tal es la poesía Que es inmortal y pobre. La poesía Vuelve como la aurora y el ocaso. (Obra poética, 1923-19/7', 161) [To see in death the dream, in dusk A sad gold, such is poetry T h a t is immortal and poor. Poetry Returns like dawn and like dusk.] It is in this p o e m that w e can find an emblem of Borges's construction of a poetics, w i t h its insistence on a language that goes beyond the metaphor, situated in the infinitive " v e r . " T h e p o e m is an illustration of itself. It says, rigorously, nothing. T h e initial juxtaposition of one kind of poetry to another collapses: the first is metaphoric and " p o o r , " but the second repeats the metaphor. It is by means of this repetition with variation that time is denied. T h r o u g h o u t Borges's poetry readers can find the same obsession w i t h violence, the cult of heroes, and the individual lost in the labyrinth of time. H e creates an epic of reading, as in " A l iniciar el estudio de la gramática anglosajona," from El hacedor, or as presented in " M a n u s c r i t o hallado en un libro de Joseph C o n r a d , " from a revised Luna de enfrente. H e prefers the use of the quatrain and B r o w n i n g ' s dramatic m o n o l o g u e s ; he builds on the same concepts by focusing on an instance that functions as a stilllife, a synecdoque that stands for a concept, like B r o w n i n g ' s decision to be a poet, or A l o n s o Q u i j a n o ' s dream. In " U n a rosa y M i l t o n " , for e x a m p l e , the p o e m concentrates on a particular situation: a vignette in time that Borges has rescued from the oblivion of literature: la postrera Rosa que Milton acercó a su cara Sin verla. (Obra poética, 1923-1977, 213) 319 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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[the last Rose that Milton brought nearer to his face Without seeing it] T h e poet invokes for the first time this scene, and b o r r o w s the rose for his verse. In this statement w e can see that the sheer multiplicity of Borges's archive, of the cultures and languages that he invokes, in different places and times, find precarious and temporary closure in the material space of the page. Reflecting on the m o o n , in his " M a n i f e s t o of Ultraism," Borges shows his classical bent in the center of the A v a n t - G a r d e : his m o o n is an object that is able to possess its old signifieds within a n e w signifier. T h e invention of M i l t o n ' s rose is accomplished by pretending a rewriting, a translation. In this w a y , a n e w object is born: Borges's rose is also M i l t o n ' s , and vice versa. Like H u i d o b r o , w h a t Borges goes back to is the existence of a universe of w o r d s on the page, and Borges's emphasis on the various seductions of symbolic p o w e r within the poetic w o r d places him within the avant-garde milieu from w h i c h the author later reneged. In spite of his attempts to erase visible changes in his w o r k , the various reformulations of the p o e m s point to a fundamental drama w h i c h is played beneath the text. Whereas other Spanish A m e r i c a n poets bring their stylistic and agonic preoccupations to the space of the page itself, Borges surrenders them to a supposed ur-space, from w h i c h he is reading and from w h i c h he is copying. Borges's Ultraism attempted to bridge the distance between Europe and the Americas by being paradoxically " p r o v i n c i a l " and cosmopolitan Ultraists acted on the national milieu while at the same time they translated other literary experiments into that same context. Since the publication of Fervor de Buenos Aires the Argentinian A v a n t - G a r d e s h o w s a preoccupation w i t h national culture w h i c h is all but absent in the more cosmopolitan H u i d o b r o . H o w e v e r , it is perhaps in the w o r k of César Vallejo (1892-1938) where w e can find a meeting of aesthetics and politics, nationalism and cosmopolitanism that has been enormously influential throughout the rest of the century, and that has fostered the division of the Spanish A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e into t w o camps: the political and the aesthetic A v a n t - G a r d e . M o v i n g to L i m a out of the A n d e a n highlands of his native Peru, and then to his untimely death in Paris, Vallejo's search encompassed some of the most daring experimental p o e m s in the language as well as some of its more politically committed works. Vallejo published only t w o b o o k s of p o e m s during his lifetime: Los heraldos negros [The Black Heralds] and Trilce [Trilce] A third, España, aparta de mí este cáliz [Spain, Take this Cup Away from Me] w a s still unpublished at his death and left a m o n g a collection of papers w i t h poems 320 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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that possess no certain order and no verifiable title. For most of their publishing history these texts have been k n o w n as Poemas humanos [Human Poems] and divided into t w o sections entitled " P o e m a s en p r o s a " and " P o e m a s h u m a n o s " according to Georgette Vallejo, the poet's w i d o w , or as " P o e m a s p o s t u m o s " and divided into t w o sections, " N o m i n a de h u e s o s " and " S e r m o n de la barbarie" according to the poet's friend Juan Larrea. T h e c o m p l e x history of these papers is admirably rendered in A m e r i c o Ferrari's recent edition of the Obra poetica w h i c h groups them under the title Los poemas de Paris. Los heraldos negros and Trilce are separated by four difficult years in Vallejo's life: his mother's death in 1918, followed by the death of a lover in 1 9 1 9 , and his incarceration, under suspicious circumstances, from N o v e m b e r 7, 1920 to February 26, 1 9 2 1 . H o w e v e r , no amount of biographical information explains the violent b r e a k d o w n in poetic language that can be seen from one b o o k to the other. Even if w e compare Trilce to other texts published during 1922 - T . S. Eliot's The WasteLand, James Joyce's Ulysses, M a n u e l M a p l e s A r c e ' s Andamios interiores, Oliverio G i r o n d o ' s Veinte poemas - it stands out for the verbal pyrotech nics that start from the invented w o r d of its title (apparently a play on the number " t h r e e " and an allusion to the b o o k ' s printing costs), and the particularity of its poetic language. T h e b o o k consists of seventy-seven poems identified by R o m a n numerals that seem to have been arranged w i t h no particular chronological or thematic order. Like G i r o n d o ' s Veinte poemas, Vallejo's procedure is guided by montage: w h e n one theme seems to predominate, Vallejo jumps and composes poems in a totally different register. Critics have generally seen a number of predomi nant motifs: the sensation of expulsion from the maternal hearth, the expression of a fundamental o r p h a n h o o d , and the rupture of the con sciousness of the human subject. Trilce is an inexplicable text, and no amount of criticism has been able to tame its revolutionary p o w e r . T h e poems play with the spatial configuration of signifiers, they lapse into o n o m a t o p o e i a , and use a language that is at the same time c o m p o s e d of archaisms and neologisms. Vallejo seems to have shattered the modernista ideal of beauty into innumerable * fragments. T h a t he accomplished this is all the more remarkable because of the context in w h i c h it takes place. A l t h o u g h by 1917 Peru had experienced its first manifestation of the A v a n t - G a r d e w i t h the publication of Panoplia lirica by A l b e r t o H i d a l g o , Vallejo apparently had little contact w i t h the avant-garde milieu. A c c o r d i n g to Saul Y u r k i e vich in Fundadores de la nueva poesia, Vallejo's reading of the A v a n t G a r d e could only c o m e from Cervantes, the journal edited in Spain by Rafael Cansinos Assens and Cesar E. A r r o y o . Cervantes in 1918 published texts by Apollinaire and H u i d o b r o , manifestos by Picabia and T z a r a , and 321 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Cansinos's translation of M a l l a r m é ' s Un coup de des. Y e t even readers a w a r e of the most recent trends in European literature were baffled by Vallejo's text, and the poet complained that his b o o k w a s ignored. Part of the lack of immediate critical response surrounding this text may be due to the fact that, unlike other manifestations óf the A v a n t - G a r d e , Trilce does not c o m e accompanied by any manifesto. Unlike H i d a l g o ' s Simplismo, conceived that same year, Trilce makes no theoretical claims and does not explain itself. N o t only w a s Vallejo not tempted into writing a manifesto, but he later attacked the A v a n t - G a r d e , in articles like "Poesía n u e v a " (192.6) and " C o n t r a el secreto profesional acerca de Pablo Abril de V i v e r o " (1927), followed by his condemnation of Surrealism in " A u t o p s i a del superreal i s m o " (1930), all written after his departure for Europe in 1923. F o l l o w i n g the same principle as that employed by H u i d o b r o in his 1 9 1 4 critique of Marinetti, Vallejo debunks the Spanish A m e r i c a n s ' supposed modernity, and accuses his contemporaries of plagiarizing European literature. Vallejo argued for a continuous exploration of the A m e r i c a n soul, preferring "the cheap Americanism of themes and n a m e s " in José Santos C h o c a n o to the "apelike n i g h t m a r e " of A m e r i c a n Vanguardistas like M a p l e s A r c e , N e r u d a , or Borges (Schwartz, Las vanguardias latino americanas, 513). Vallejo's essays have fostered a reading of the A v a n t - G a r d e as a movement lacking in A m e r i c a n concerns. Vallejo assessed that inno vation in Europe w a s one thing, but that the same innovation transported into the A m e r i c a s w a s just another example of imitation: "In A m e r i c a , precisely because these disciplines are imported and practiced w i t h o u t modifications, they do not a l l o w writers to reveal and realize themselves, since said disciplines d o not respond to peculiar necessities nor have they been conceived by the free and vital impulses of those that cultivate t h e m " (Schwartz, Las vanguardias, 514). O n e can see in these w o r d s of Vallejo's the meaning he w o u l d have for later writers like Alejo Carpentier, w h o w o u l d perform the same condemnation on Surrealists in the famous prologue to El reino de este mundo (1949) [The Kingdom of this World]. D u r i n g the period of composition of the Poemas humanos, Vallejo debated and j e c o n c e p t u a l i z e d the role of the artist in a revolutionary society, and the position of poetry vis-a-vis politics, particularly after he traveled to the Soviet Union in 1928 and 1929, and during the Spanish Civil W a r . Y e t where other critics w o u l d verge on the doctrinaire, Vallejo still attempts to nuance his v i e w s . W h e n told by the Peruvian politician and critic Victor H a y a de la T o r r e that artists must help by w o r k i n g in the p r o p a g a n d a of the R e v o l u t i o n , the poet replied that he sympathized with the political intentions of the demand, but that as an artist, "I d o not accept any label, mine or from others, that even couching itself w i t h the 322 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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best of intentions, w o u l d submit my aesthetic liberty to the service of this or that political p r o p a g a n d a " (Schwartz, Las vanguardias, 481). H e distinguished between a revolutionary art and an art that is nominally revolutionary. In Vallejo's Poemas humanos the aesthetic and the political are not opposed. H e delves in the sonnet form, resurrects the p o e m in prose in the tradition of Baudelaire and R i m b a u d , incorporates some of the typogra phical experimentation as well as the nominalizing chaos of his earlier Trilce, but above all, he creates a new v o c a b u l a r y for poetry that uses a poetics of discontinuity and fragmentation applied to proletarian revolt. Even though in " C o n t r a el secreto profesional" he had renounced cheap nationalism, in " T e l i i r i c a y m a g n e t i c a " Vallejo creates a n e w h y m n to Peru from the ruins of Santos C h o c a n o ' s Americanism: jMecanica sincera y peruanisima la del cerro Colorado! jSuelo teorico y practico! jSurcos inteligentes; ejemplo: el monolito y su cortejo! (Obra poetica (1988) 360) [Sincere and Peruvian mechanics that of the colored hill! Theoretical and practical ground! Intelligent furrows; example: the monolith and its retinue!] Here w e can see the ultimate threshold for the carefully w r o u g h t poetic language that Vallejo had been searching for since Los heraldos negros. R e v o l u t i o n and aesthetics meet and clash at the same time. In " L o s mineros salieron de la m i n a " Vallejo exclaims: jEra de ver sus polvos corrosivos! jEra de sus oxidos de altura! Cunas de boca, yunques de boca, aparatos de boca (jEs formidable!) (Obra poetica (1988) 356) [It was a sight to be seen their corrosive dust! They were to be heard, their oxides from heights! M o u t h wedges, mouth anvils, mouth apparatus (It is terrific!)] T h e e x c l a m a t o r y stance is joined to a more Baudelairian irony in some of the prose p o e m s . In others, a more melancholic Vallejo reigns, as in the justifiably famous "Piedra negra sobre una piedra b l a n c a " and the m o v i n g "Paris, octubre 1 9 3 6 . " Here Vallejo's violently fragmented subject offers his readers a m o m e n t of lyrical sadness. W i t h Vallejo's w o r k , the reader feels that these p o e m s are precisely c o m p o s e d of scraps of paper, of the detritus of capitalism in the period 323 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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during the t w o w o r l d w a r s . Vallejo a l l o w s us to see the p o e m as it is being written, he is a poet w h o s e rough edges are visible all over the page. His poems at times seem to be made up of sundry hétéroclite fragments that make no attempt at logical connection. For e x a m p l e , in one of his posthumous p o e m s , " S o m b r e r o , abrigo, g u a n t e s , " Vallejo w e a v e s synec doques sewn into the fabric of a dismembered sonnet written in the Parisian Café de la Régence, across from the C o m é d i e Française. Its first quartet oscillates between Alexandrines and the hendecasyllabic; giving the impression that Vallejo is c o m i n g up w i t h the form of the p o e m at the m o m e n t in w h i c h he is writing it, as an act of impatience. M u c h of his w o r k consists of this violent encounter between different elements. T h i s invitation to c o m p o s e the fabric of the w o r k accounts for many of the misreadings of his critics, w h o insist on imposing different constructions to a w o r k that is the literary equivalent of one of T a t l i n ' s constructivist monuments. Critics generally talk about a retrenchment from the experimentation of the A v a n t - G a r d e , a period of order that follows the disordered chaos of a poetry that w a s fundamentally elitist and anti-popular. In Spanish A m e r i c a the break from the period of frenzied experimentation has been placed in 1929 by N e l s o n O s o r i o , in 1931 by Jorge S c h w a r t z , in 1935 by H u g o V e r a n i , and in 1939 by Federico Schopf. Regardless of the particular year w h e r e this retrenchment takes place, the negation of the A v a n t G a r d e has to be seen as part of the dialectics of modernity. By denying the A v a n t - G a r d e , poets were precisely reaffirming its continuing validity. Vallejo's writing can serve as an index for the g r o w i n g polarization o f Spanish A m e r i c a n culture at the end of the 1920s, one that had been prefigured since the beginning of the decade by the formation of c o m m u n ist parties in Argentina (1918), M e x i c o (1919), C u b a (1925), and Peru (1928). A series of w o r k e r s ' strikes throughout Spanish A m e r i c a occur in the midst of a generalized economic crisis motivated by the economic collapse of 1929, and these in turn were f o l l o w e d by a series of military coups in Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and C u b a , w h o s e consequences w o u l d be devastating for culture. Spanish A m e r i c a n s felt that a period w a s c o m i n g to an end. José C a r l o s M a r i â t e g u i , the great theoretician of Peruvian society and culture, died in 1930, and his journal Amauta ceased publication. Martin Fierro in Argentina closed in 1927, as a consequence of political changes and the Revista de Avance folded in C u b a in 1930. T h e debate of the 1930s and early 1940s centered on w h a t has been called since then the " c l a s s i c a l " opposition within the A v a n t - G a r d e of the "politically committed art" and that w h i c h appropriates the tenets of "art for art's s a k e . " T h e s e debates originate not only from the conception of art itself since the nineteenth century but also from the very definition o f

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Spanish American poetry: 1922-1975 the " a v a n t - g a r d e , " a term b o r r o w e d from the v o c a b u l a r y of militarism and adopted and adapted by M a r x , Engels, and later Lenin in order to speak of a distinct class within society that prepares the advent of the revolutionary struggle. T h i s slippage, between a term that is understood within the province of aesthetics, and the same term understood within the realm of social revolution, w o u l d be perverted by Stalinism, w h i c h paradoxically identified itself w i t h a political avant-garde while at the same time it frowned on all attempts at artistic independence that were not sanctioned by the Party. In the 1930s and 1940s the doctrine of Socialist realism abolished artistic experimentation, w h i c h w a s then considered the expression of a decadent art. H o w e v e r , it may be misleading to define the A v a n t - G a r d e by appropriating the definitions used by the more dogmatic left. F r o m C u b i s m to Surrealism, the Vanguardia w a s an art of the marketplace, a w a r e of h o w to scandalize and where to scandalize, conscious of w h a t the audience w a n t e d , and willing to feed the audience its necessary dose of shock and novelty. It is only after a thorough domination of the marketplace that the realignment of forces pointed to a more politically committed art, and to a wider search for national expression. T h e readings of the A v a n t - G a r d e by the left d o not help us to understand the w o r k of Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), but they d o provide a context from w h i c h to examine and highlight h o w Mistral's poetry seemed to be completely alien to the polemics of the time. A l t h o u g h the editors of the Antología de poesía chilena nueva exclude her from their ranks and classify her w o r k as fundamentally reactionary and full of nineteenth-century motifs, she m a y be called upon to provide a bridge between the poetry of the A v a n t - G a r d e and the poetry that f o l l o w e d it. Her poetry and her poetic persona are present throughout the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, and Mistral w a s the first Spanish A m e r i c a n writer to w i n the N o b e l Prize for Literature in 1945. Her w o r k encompasses the multiple registers of a deeply personal and internal search as well as a PanAmericanist o u t l o o k that will be seen in the later poetry of Pablo N e r u d a . Mistral is generally classified as a Post-modernista, and her contribu tions to the poetics of the continent in the 1930s and 1940s have been skirted by a subtle act of chronological sexism. A s the term is used in Spanish A m e r i c a , Post-modernismo names a m o m e n t of cultural impasse that is still not well defined, between the glories of Modernismo and the violence of the A v a n t - G a r d e , and its emblem is Enrique G o n z á l e z M a r t i n e z ' s famous reaction against D a r í o in " T u é r c e l e el cuello al cisne" ( 1 9 1 1 ) . In part, this classification of Mistral occurs because she is an older poet in relation to the younger A v a n t - G a r d e generation, but also because she did not quite fit with the other poets of her time. Sucre, in La máscara, la transparencia, has defined her w o r k as dominated by a Christological 32.5 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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passion - her unadorned style, lacking in the rhetorical flourish or even the penchant for scandal of her peers, does not a l l o w critics to easily classify the poet within the artistic currents of her time. Part of the problem is that Mistral separated herself from the A v a n t - G a r d e , and the A v a n t - G a r d e condemned her w o r k to premature anachronism. W h a t has been c o n sidered her best b o o k , Desolación, includes the famous "Sonetos de la muerte," w h i c h established the presence of an original voice that evokes erotic loss in a language of a measured elegance: Del nicho helado en que los hombres te pusiereon, te bajaré a la tierra humilde y soleada Que he de dormirme en ella los hombres no supieron, Y que hemos de soñar sobre la misma almohada. (Antología poética de Gabriela Mistral, 47) [From the frozen niche in which men have placed you I will lower you to the humble and sunlit earth. T h a t within her I shall sleep men did not know, And that we shall sleep over the same pillow.] T h e best p o e m s of Mistral possess this same chiaroscuro, the poet d r a w s out of the verse an emotion that meditates on itself w i t h a tone of decision and will that is here signaled by the play between the affirmative acts of the poet, the irregular and fragmented past of both burial and k n o w l e d g e ( " p u s i e r o n . . . supieron"), and the elegant and elegiac construction " h e de d o r m i r m e . " Mistral does not write a p o e m on the violent contrasts between life and death, but on the mediation of sleep and affection as a space that l o o k s b e y o n d visible oppositions. T h e b o d y covered in its frozen niche will find a more humble abode in a sunlit earth that for Mistral is both an end and a beginning. Because of the particular m o d e in w h i c h desire, loss, and yearning are expressed, " L o s sonetos de la m u e r t e " deserve their o w n particular place a m o n g the best p o e m s of the tradition. Narrative p o e m s like "Historias de l o c a , " from Tala helped Mistral gain a reputation for a poetry that clearly expressed an emotive state w i t h the utmost e c o n o m y of means. It is a disarming poetry, both for its style as well as for its thematics. Tala represents a dramatic journey from the w o r l d of the individual to that of the collective A m e r i c a n consciousness. T h e eight sections of the b o o k are constructed by underscoring precisely such a journey: they start w i t h " M u e r t e de mi m a d r e " and " A l u c i n a c i ó n , " where Mistral writes in a post-modernista voice of intimate reflection, but shift to a populist romantic strain in the latter sections of the b o o k . F r o m the third to the eighth section of Tala, Mistral m o v e d t o w a r d s a divinization of " e l e m e n t a r y " objects in " M a t e r i a s . " T h e theme of these poems to bread, salt, water, and air, and the vistas of the hymnic " A m é r i c a " reappear in Pablo N e r u d a ' s Odas elementales. 326 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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T h i s préfiguration of N e r u d a ' s grand theme might be considered her best poetry. Y e t whereas N e r u d a is a poet of everpresent oceanic amplitude, w h o layers metaphor upon metaphor on objects, w h a t Mistral wants to discover is the symbolic aura of things, reflected in a " s i m p l e " language. In " M a t e r i a l , " for e x a m p l e , she uses one of her most c o m m o n stylistic resources, quatrains that flow with unsuspecting ease; in " C o s a s , " from the section entitled " S a u d a d e , " remembrance and loss are joined by a N a t u r e that blurs the distinctions between the space of m e m o r y or invention. Mistral's objects acquire an aura of their o w n , like the allegorical landscapes in mystical Spanish poetry - as w h e n the poet speaks of an " a g u a silenciosa" w h o s e ripple is felt in spite of the absence of w i n d . T h e mystery of this N a t u r e is related to childhood: the magnifi cence of the A n d e s and the protection of its valleys. H e r sense of romantic loss is not expressed in agonic high registers but by the use of an almost crystalline verse w i t h no deceptive undertones. T h e latter sections of Tala give an account o f the poet as public figure. It is as if Mistral in one b o o k had made her particular symbolic journey, one that continues in Lagar. It is impossible to eschew Mistral's contribution to the poetical m y t h o g r a p h y in Spanish A m e r i c a n literature, even if her verses seemed outdated to many of her contemporaries. Like D a r í o , she w a s a poet w h o gave Spanish A m e r i c a n s a collective sense of self. In the narrations written by historians of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry, it seems as if the experimentation of the A v a n t - G a r d e flows seamlessly according to the steps traced in the poetic journey that can be seen in Tala, where the personal and the political are thematically w o v e n with no visible contra dictions. H o w e v e r , it w a s precisely the articulation of a personal voice that w a s at issue in the m o v e a w a y from the linguistic experimentation of the A v a n t - G a r d e in the 1930s. Pablo N e r u d a (1904-1973) m o v e d out of an aesthetics that w a s similar to early Mistral: under the aegis of Post-modernismo he had written his Crepusculario, and the classic and consecrated Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada [Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair]^ where he follows erotic themes explored by Modernistas like José A s u n c i ó n Silva (1865-1896) and L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s (1874-1938). Y e t whereas Mistral did not totally proclaim allegiance to poetic innovation in her verse, N e r u d a assimilated the A v a n t - G a r d e in Tentativa del hombre infinito, in order to unite, afterwards, one of the major texts of this period. T h e poems in N e r u d a ' s best b o o k , Residencia en la tierra (1925/1935) [Residence on Earth] defy readers' logic. It is a cycle that, upon its completion, can be seen as divided into three parts. T h e first Residencia is published in Chile in 1933 and contains poems from 1925 to 1 9 3 1 . T h e second appears in a Spanish edition by C r u z y R a y a in M a d r i d in 1935, and


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adds p o e m s from 1931 to 1935. T h e r e is a Tercera residencia, that is, according to Emir R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l in El viajero inmovil, a " b i b l i o graphic h y b r i d " c o m p o s e d of t w o irreconcilable and distinct b o o k s . O n l y the t w o initial parts of this v o l u m e - from 1933 and 1935 - belong to w h a t R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l has termed the infernal cycle of Residencia, ending with a furiously erotic sequence entitled " L a s furias y las p e n a s . " T h e rest of the p o e m s belong to a different cycle, that of the Spanish Civil W a r . T h e y are, according to R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l , the account of a different kind of inferno, and the w o r k of a fundamentally different poet, more concerned n o w w i t h social rather than personal issues. N e r u d a published Residencia in 1933 and 1935 to considerable critical acclaim. T h e fact that the eminent Spanish literary critic A m a d o A l o n s o w r o t e Poesia y estilo de Pablo Neruda in 1940 reveals that the b o o k w a s received as an important literary event, even if A l o n s o misread N e r u d a as a fundamentally hermetic poet, one w h o s e texts possess a hidden allusive system. Residencia is, on the contrary, an illustration of the states of mind within the consciousness of the poet. If it is not structured, like other vanguardist texts, according to the principles of superimposition and montage, the b o o k nevertheless rambles from one state of mind to another as a kind of random poetic diary, N e r u d a ' s "saison en enfer." It w a s written while he w a s in charge of various diplomatic posts in A s i a , principally in C e y l o n and R a n g o o n - but except for the poems about his mistress Josie Bliss and the satiric short portraits of British expatriates, the b o o k makes few references to its Asian milieu. N e r u d a is not concerned w i t h form but with objects. T h e s e are actually the central elements of Residencia en la tierra. T h e poet's agony is not redeemed by a language that struggles to account for multiplicity and chaos. T h e disarray of the w o r l d implies creation but also the agonic dissolution of the poet's " I . " T h a t N e r u d a w a s " r e d e e m e d " by objects can be seen in the poetics of the natural w o r l d that he developed during the period w h e n he c o m p o s e d his b o o k . It finds its most succinct articulation in "Para una poesia sin p u r e z a " published in Caballo verde para la poesia (October, 1935). Here N e r u d a manifests a penchant for "objects in a state of rest: wheels that have traversed long and dusty distances, bearing great vegetable or mineral w e i g h t s " (Schwartz, Las vanguardias, 485) and states: " L e t the poetry w e search for be like that, w o r n as if by an acid by the duties of the hand, penetrated by sweat and smoke, w i t h a smell of urine and lilies, splattered by the different professions that are exercised within and outside of the l a w " (p. 485). N e r u d a concludes his manifesto brandishing the terrors of ice: " H e w h o flees from bad taste falls on i c e " (p. 486). N e r u d a ' s aesthetic darts were directed at the Spanish poet Juan R a m o n Jimenez (1881-1958) and his vision of a "pure p o e t r y , " an aesthetic that 328 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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searched for the essence of the sublime removed from the contingencies of time and place. Jimenez is such an important figure in Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry of this period that it is difficult to do.justice to the ramifications of his poetics in the scope of this essay. H e served as an inspiration to certain groups (noticeably, that of Jose L e z a m a L i m a and Origenes in C u b a ) , and as a negative example to poets like N e r u d a , obsessed w i t h decay and the products of the modern urban w o r l d . W e should add that it w a s not only Jimenez's w o r k s that divided Spanish A m e r i c a n poets, but also the strong and temperamental positions of a poet w h o represented for Spaniards and Spanish Americans the epitome of the aesthete, fjc is an open b o o k invented and disfigured during the 1930s and 1940s. T h e difficult relationship between N e r u d a and Jimenez continued up to the 1940s, and informs N e r u d a ' s condemnation of the passivity and formalism of M e x i c a n poetry in a debate that t o o k place w h e n he w a s sent as Chilean C o n s u l to M e x i c o City at the beginning of the decade. T h e general critique of this kind of " f o r m a l i s m " placed N e r u d a a m o n g the forefront of a generation of Spanish poets like Rafael Alberti and L e o n Felipe, w h o joined him in a search for a different language. T h e i r concern with social politics arose from the Spanish Civil W a r ; the death of Federico G a r c i a L o r c a (September, 1936) mobilized them. T h a t this w a s a defining moment for this generation can be seen in the fact that the Congreso de escritores anti-fascist as (July, 1937) w a s the last time the intellectual games of H u i d o b r o met with the vorticist impurity of N e r u d a ; the forcefully revolutionary language of Vallejo with the ongoing discov ery of modernity of O c t a v i o Paz. N e r u d a ' s shift from Surrealist to Americanist is a c o m p l e x process that arises from the cultural climate of the 1940s and culminates with his visit to M a c c h u Picchu in O c t o b e r , 1943 - perhaps one of the pivotal moments of N e r u d a ' s life. F e w events in the history of literature have been charged w i t h the significance of this particular visit. Alturas de Macchu Picchu [The Heights of Macchu Picchu], published in 1946 and then integrated within the vast p a n o r a m a of the Canto general, is the most lucid m o m e n t of the Americanist enterprise. It is Alturas that widens the scope of a w o r k that N e r u d a conceived in 1943, w h e n he published as a separate v o l u m e parts of Canto general de Chile. F r o m 1943 to 1948 N e r u d a thought out and planned a more extensive Canto general, w h i c h w a s then completed during one year, while the poet w a s in hiding from the state police of President Gabriel G o n z a l e z Videla (Santi, Pablo Neruda. The Poetics of Prophecy). T h i s is w h y the b o o k has been generally read according to one of its central themes, that of the fugitive poet. T h i s figure is as central to the p o e m as Dante's exile is to the Divine Comedy; the structure of both b o o k s demands that a poetic self hold the text together as a unifying principle. N e r u d a speaks as a public 329 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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figure, as a witness, and as a victim, and it is from this individual voice, from its desire to name and give origin and meaning to life, that the b o o k e m b a r k s on the creation of an A m e r i c a n founding myth, w i t h a visible plot that is cut into major zones. Canto general is assembled by means of blocks. Sections range from the history of liberators and tyrants, to descriptions of nature or of historical events, to the adventures of the fugitive poet. T h i s manner of assembling the b o o k resembles the stones of M a c c h u Picchu itself. N e r u d a constructed his b o o k with the solidity of stones, and these close one of the more important sections (vn) of the twelve that form " A l t u r a s de M a c c h u Picchu": Cuando la mano color de arcilla se convirtió en arcilla, y cuando los pequeños párpados se cerraron llenos de ásperos muros, poblados de castillos, y cuando todo el hombre se enredó en su agujero, quedó la exactitud enarbolada: el alto sitio de la aurora humana: la más alta vasija que contuvo el silencio: una vida de piedra después de tantas vidas. {Canto general [1990], 134) [When the clay-colored hand turned to clay, when the little eyelids closed, filled with rough walls, brimming with castles, and when the entire man was trapped in his hole, exactitude remained hoisted aloft: this high site of the human dawn: the highest vessel that has contained silence: a life of stone after so many lives.] (Tr. Jack Schmitt, Canto General, 35) T h i s is one of the more dramatic sections of " A l t u r a s de M a c c h u P i c c h u , " followed by a shift in tone in Section v m w h i c h N e r u d a begins by c o m m a n d i n g " S u b e c o n m i g o , amor a m e r i c a n o " (p. 134) ["Rise up with me, A m e r i c a n l o v e " ] (Schmitt, 36). It represents the culmination of N e r u d a ' s historical pathos, as he contemplates lives and histories that have been silenced and destroyed forever. In C a n t o x N e r u d a demands: " M a c c h u Picchu, pusiste / piedra en la piedra, y en la base, h a r a p o s ? " {Canto general, 138) [ " M a c c h u Picchu, did y o u put / stone upon stone and, at the base, tatters?"] (Schmitt, 39). It is silence itself w h i c h N e r u d a turns into a positive creative force. T h e lost poet of Residencia, w i t h w h o m " M a c c h u P i c c h u " begins, has been able to decipher silence, and to understand it as a creative force that blends the vast p a n o r a m a w h i c h unfolds in N e r u d a ' s b o o k . N e r u d a ' s chiseled verse, with its rhetorical solemnity, allows for this repetition ("arcilla. . . arcilla"; "piedra. . . 330 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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p i e d r a " [ " c l a y . . . clay; stone. . . stone"]). It is a style that gathers its o w n force and m o m e n t u m verse after verse. N e r u d a did not e m p l o y the same style in the b o o k s that followed, cycles of love p o e m s like Los versos del capitdn, and three volumes of Odas elementales where he prefers a much shorter line form (in the Odas these at times consist merely of one or t w o w o r d s ) . In these feats of metaphor, N e r u d a does not write only of literary objects, but includes the w h o l e g a m u t of creation in his p o e m s : fruits, vegetables, dictionaries, b o o k s objects insignificant enough to be forgotten in everyday life but w h i c h N e r u d a metaphorically reconstructs, in an act of defamiliarization that is admirable for its virtuosity and daring. N e r u d a overturns the traditional ode of the neoclassical age w i t h irreverence and h u m o r , while transform ing each object into a solemn creation. T h e s e are some of the more celebrated of N e r u d a ' s later p o e m s , written w h e n he w a s already enormously famous as a poet and political figure, a cultural conscience of Spanish A m e r i c a . In the Odas, N e r u d a w a s able to sense a n e w m o d e of poetry appearing in Spanish A m e r i c a at the time, principally in N i c a n o r Parra's Poemas y antipoemas [Poems and Antipoems]. T h i s poetry w a s m u c h more collo quial and explored issues that w e r e not generally accepted as " p o e t i c . " T h e odes entail the suppression of the subject; they collapse the distinc tions between the poetic and the political by erasing the class distinctions that m a k e certain objects more " p o e t i c " than others (Santi, Pablo Neruda, 210). H o w e v e r , this suppression is undertaken as a voluntary gesture, and one only has to l o o k at the prologue to the odes, " E l hombre invisible," to notice h o w this elimination of the poetic " I " does not entail the desperation that w a s noticed in the more infernal cycles of the Residencia: yo quiero que todos vivan en mi vida y canten en mi canto yo no tengo importancia (Poesia, 1:459) [I want for all to live in my life and sing in my song I am not important] N e r u d a advised younger poets to forgo the painful initiation o f the Residencias, and to concentrate on the more political aspects of his writing. Parra's " a n t i p o e m a s , " at first a deliberate reaction against the more cosmic and rhetorical N e r u d a , are closer to the poet of the " o d a s . " Y e t N e r u d a ' s m o v e to this poetry is also an acceptance of the place of self 331 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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that prefigures the w o r k of O c t a v i o Paz and the quiet resignation and faith of José L e z a m a L i m a ' s disappearance into the tokonoma of Fragmentos a sui imán. T h i s persona that can be seen in the Odas ushered in one of the more tragic endings of a poetic career in Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry. After this moment of glory, w i t h his N o b e l Prize in Literature in 1 9 7 1 , N e r u d a ' s death on September 2 3 , 1 9 7 3 , days after the collapse of his friend Salvador Allende's government, gives an ominous symbolic aura to the end of the poet's life. A l w a y s prescient of the dangers of complacency, in his last b o o k s of poems N e r u d a turned once again to a visionary, prophetic mode. A long period of introspection sustained in the 1950s and 1960s culminates in Fin del mundo, La espada encendida, and 2000, b o o k s where N e r u d a comes face to face with a Blakean apocalypse. H i s return to a visible prophetic mode is intended as a w a r n i n g to Spanish A m e r i c a n s , but it also confirms the allegorical character of his w o r k . N e r u d a ' s visions are one of the metaphors of closure for this period of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry. A f r o - C a r i b b e a n poetry appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s out of an atmosphere in w h i c h the Surrealists' penchant for Primitivism and authenticity w a s translated by C u b a n poets in order to centralize the position of African descendants on the island - from being ethnographic representations of a " b a c k w a r d " society (as they appear in the C u b a n ethnologist Fernando O r t i z ' s first b o o k s ) , to being in the forefront and center of C u b a n nationality. It w a s this inheritance of the A v a n t - G a r d e , filtered in C u b a through the w o r k of José O r t e g a y Gasset, his Revista de Occidente, and Spengler's The Decline of the West, that prefigured a n e w aesthetics. D u r i n g the same period of time (between 1928 and 1931), the poets grouped around the journal Contemporáneos in M e x i c o occupied the center stage in the poetical production of the country. A s t w o versions of a c o m m o n avant-garde inheritance, the Contemporáneos and the A f r o C a r i b b e a n movement in poetry might be compared, even if the former were accused as Formalists by N e r u d a and the latter were concerned w i t h social action. Both groups can be seen within the context offered by Jimenez's "poesía p u r a , " Surrealism, and the Spanish Civil W a r . A careful study of A f r o - C a r i b b e a n poetry and that of the Contemporáneos would allow a critic to precisely deconstruct the various threads by means of w h i c h the cultural presence of Europe is affirmed and denied in Spanish A m e r i c a during the 1930s. T h e poets grouped around the journal Contemporáneos (1928-1931) in M e x i c o have been c o m p a r e d to the Spanish " G e n e r a c i ó n del 2 7 . " Like their Spanish contemporaries, they m o v e d a w a y from the more experi mental A v a n t - G a r d e (in M e x i c o k n o w n as Estridentismo) while they also rediscovered the classical Spanish tradition, in order to pave the w a y for a 332 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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new poetry that can be seen in the late 1930s in journals like Taller, where most recent and contemporary poetry in M e x i c o begins. T h e Contempor áneos are Bernardo O r t i z de M o n t e l l a n o , C a r l o s Pellicer, José G o r o s t i z a , Jaime T o r r e s Bodet, Jorge Cuesta, X a v i e r Villaurrutia, Salvador N o v o , and Gilberto O w e n . T h e y cannot strictly be called a generation, but a state of mind, as G u i l l e r m o Sheridan has remarked. T h e s e poets devoured the most experimental currents in Europe and Latin A m e r i c a . T h e y not only founded journals (Ulises, 1928; Contemporáneos 1 9 2 8 - 1 9 3 1 ; Exa men, 1932) but also theatrical groups and cinema clubs. Their cultural action may be seen in their w o r k published in newspapers of the time, in their avid translation of European writers, and in their indefatigable efforts to create an open cultural climate out of an atmosphere of instability arising from the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n . It w a s precisely the Contemporáneos' demanding sense of aesthetics that accounted for their distance from the more prevalent artistic currents of post-revolutionary M e x i c o . T h e y were not interested in the novel of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n and argued instead for a revolutionary novel; they isolated themselves from politically committed literature and inserted G i d e , Proust, and C o c t e a u into the M e x i c a n arena. For these actions they were attacked as anti-nationalist and even as producers of "effeminate" literature, unable to insert themselves in the more " v i r i l e " M e x i c a n nationalist and populist arena. T h e i r painful contradictions have been examined by O c t a v i o Paz: they rejected the official line but joined the diplomatic corps; they depended on governmental support but did not extol M e x i c a n nationalism. It is to this g r o u p that w e o w e t w o of the most important b o o k s produced in Spanish A m e r i c a n modern poetry: José G o r o s t i z a ' s long p o e m Muerte sin fin [Death without End] and X a v i e r Villaurrutia's collection Nostalgia de la muerte. In the first b o o k published by José G o r o s t i z a ( 1 9 0 1 - 1 9 7 3 ) , Canciones para cantar en las barcas, the poet discovers the classical Spanish tradition in the use of the " r o m a n c i l l o s , " where a melodious, chiseled line creates an intellectual poetry that masks itself as popular, simple verse. G o r o s tiza's preoccupations w i t h form in this first b o o k of poems will lead to his Muerte sin fin, perhaps one of the more philosophically c o m p l e x p o e m s in the Spanish language. D i v i d e d into ten unnumbered sections, the p o e m examines the relationship between form and substance within the context of creation and destruction. G o r o s t i z a tries to capture an essence of objects that can only be apprehended by their sudden immobility in space and time, and postulates that precisely w h a t a l l o w s us to intellectually grasp an object is also w h a t condemns it to a "death w i t h o u t e n d . " A n eminently p h e n o m e n o l o g i c a l p o e m , Muerte sin fin belongs to the tra dition of Valéry and M a l l a r m é , of a poetry constructed on the negation of poetry. 333



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G o r o s t i z a ' s language of philosophical meditation is rigorous - abstraction is a function of the e c o n o m y of means. C o m p a r e d to Altazor, Muerte sin fin is an exercise in form: its carefully measured sentences glide through the page, in blank verses w h o s e subject is lost and recaptured. T h e differences between Altazor and G o r o s t i z a ' s p o e m are w o r t h recalling, since they illustrate t w o different moments of Spanish A m e r i c a n modernity. If H u i d o b r o questions and asserts the p o w e r of signiflers, G o r o s t i z a concentrates on the signified; whereas H u i d o b r o uses the language of romantic passion, G o r o s t i z a offers us a cool p h e n o m e n o l o g y . His is a language of philosophical reflection that does not proceed by accumulating metaphor upon metaphor, but by the patient deconstruction o f a central image, that of a glass and of the water it contains. T h e models and echoes of Muerte sin fin can be seen in Sor Juana Inés de la C r u z ' s Primero sueño and in O c t a v i o Paz's Piedra de sol [Sunstone], X a v i e r Villaurrutia (1903-1950) divides the second and definitive edition of Nostalgia de la muerte into three sections, c o m p o s e d of previously published poems: " N o c t u r n o s , " " O t r o s n o c t u r n o s , " and " N o s t a l g i a s . " F r o m its opening epigraph by M i c h a e l D r a y t o n , " B u r n e d in a sea of ice, and d r o w n e d amidst a fire," Villaurrutia declares his preference for p a r a d o x . T h e s e nostalgias of death are eminently poems of a desire that is as fleeting and evanescent as G o r o s t i z a ' s apprehension of things. Villaurrutia is a b o v e all a poet of an erotic passion that can be seen in the metaphysical paintings of G i o r g i o de C h i r i c o and read in C o c t e a u . T h e y are p o e m s where the obsession with beauty underscores the loneliness that is expressed by the poetic voice. A s a poet of desire, w h a t is important in Villaurrutia's poetry is the encounter w i t h a beauty that is not abstract, but w h o s e very corporeality reminds the poet of an unfallen self. Villaurrutia will lapse into w o r d p l a y in order to glide the signiflers and their permutations on the page. T o the visual aesthetics of the earlier A v a n t - G a r d e , Villaurrutia adds a poetics of sound. O n e of the b o o k ' s best poems, " N o c t u r n o en que nada se o y e , " reproduces the voice of nothingness - a voice that Villaurrutia perceives as it is falling between t w o mirrors. N o t h i n g is heard and nothingness itself is heard. Villaurrutia's fires are muted, intellectual burnings of the flesh that fear the immobility of ice, a prison made of water that is also Breton's nightmare. C o l d , water, fire, and thirst are the key elements in Villaurrutia's poetics, where one can notice the presence of Rilke and N o v a l i s . For Villaurrutia, death is the before and after of this interlude of life. In the C a r i b b e a n , w h a t w a s to become Afro-Antillean or A f r o C a r i b b e a n poetry originated out of a similar context of late Modernismo and soul-searching lyricism that can be seen in the Contemporáneos. Luis Palés M a t o s (1898-1959), w h o in 1925 published his p o e m " P u e b l o n e g r o , " w a s until then a Post-modernista w h o had c o m e into contact w i t h 334



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the Puerto R i c a n versions of the A v a n t - G a r d e . In C u b a , José Z a c a r í a s Tallet, w h o had written his p o e m " L a r u m b a " in 1928, and A m a d e o R o l d a n , w h o penned his Obertura sobre temas cubanos and Ballet negro in that same year, created an atmosphere that w a s already mediated by the cultural appropriation of " p r i m i t i v e " art by the European A v a n t - G a r d e . O n e should recall that in the U S , Langston H u g h e s w r o t e his Weary Blues in 1927, and in France the Surrealists' search for non-Occidental w a y s of thinking had found in African art a purity of expression that did not participate in the constraints of Western rationality. A space had been opened for w h a t w a s at first a playful depiction of ordinary life, one that erupted first by means of the jitanjáforas, a term coined by Alfonso Reyes in 1929 from one of M a r i a n o Brull's Poemas en menguante (1928). For Brull, w h o had traveled to France in 1926 and had c o m e into contact w i t h the Spanish Generation of 1927 and Juan R a m ó n Jimenez's "poesía p u r a , " the jitanjaforas enabled the poet to write in a language that w a s " o r i g i n a r y " in the widest possible sense. Brull's association w i t h poesía pura, as well as his writing of p o e m s w i t h A f r o - C u b a n motifs deserve to be underscored, particularly because both, poesía pura and A f r o - C u b a n i s m , are transitional poetic inquiries that foreshadow the poetry of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Brull's Poemas en menguante and Emilio Ballagas's Júbilo y fuga (1931) and Cuaderno de poesía negra (1934) belong to the same context as that of the Revista de Avance, w h i c h finished its publication in 1930. In retrospect, it might be hard to see the links between the practice of A f r o - C u b a n poetry and the more intimate amorous lyric produced by these poets, except by stating that the modality of " A f r i c a n " verse w a s seen by Ballagas and Brull as a linguistic exercise, a w a y of integrating themselves into an A v a n t - G a r d e that their other poetry had forsaken. If the "purity of p o e t r y " that w a s searched for by Valéry and Juan R a m ó n Jiménez w a n t e d to strip poetry of extraneous elements in order to capture the evanescent fugacity of an ahistorical poetic essence, Brull's first experimentations in A f r o - C u b a n verse obey a similar impulse, noticed by A l f o n s o Reyes in the jitanjáfora. A c c o r d i n g to Reyes, jitanjáforas w a n t e d to return w o r d s to their "purely linguistic v a l u e " because this origin had been lost, " a s he w h o loses the fluid sensation of water after stepping t o o much on blocks of i c e " {La experiencia literaria, 190). Reyes s a w the liberating potential of these w o r d s within a poetry consumed by philosophical speculation, and his reference to " i c e , " w h i c h seems to echo N e r u d a ' s critique of Jiménez, attests to the fact that "poesía n e g r a " w a s to free the poet from the aesthetic distances imposed by Jiménez. It is important to state that the modality as it w a s practiced in particular by Ballagas and Brull, and later collected by R a m ó n G u i r a o in his Órbita de la poesía afrocubana (1939), has been seen by crides as emphasizing the exotic aspect of African335 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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A m e r i c a n culture w i t h o u t truly understanding its internal mechanisms (Smart, Nicolas Guillen: Popular Poet of the Caribbean). A f r o - C a r i b b e a n poetry erupts on the literary scene on April 30, 1930, w h e n the Diario de la Marina in H a v a n a publishes eight short poems by N i c o l a s Guillen (1902-1989) entitled Motivos de son. Guillen t o o k this creative leap after reading Langston Hughes's poetry and meeting him in H a v a n a in January, 1930. Guillen's eight " M o t i v o s " are short sketches in w h i c h characters speak in the first person w i t h a Spanish " d e f o r m e d " by the particular manner of black C u b a n speech. Guillen writes the poems in order to faithfully reproduce the tone and rhythm of daily speech. His eight voices appear w i t h o u t mediation or contextual setting on the page. N o scene is described: these are actually performances that use the black rhythmic idioms of the son in order to e x p a n d the parameters of w h a t w a s socially accepted conventional representation. T h e r e is no formal syllabic construction in the line of verse, nor is there an o b v i o u s preoccupation w i t h rhyme. Guillen prefers to construct according to the laws of rhythm based on repetition. T h e unfettered sensuality of language and tone in Motivos de son strike the reader immediately. N o t h i n g happens in these poems except their o w n happening. T h e situations presented here are sharp-edged observations of black life. F r o m the incidental and anecdotal representations of black C u b a n life, Guillen moves in Songoro cosongo to exploring the implications of his revolution in poetic language. H e does a w a y with trying to depict the " t a l k " of black C u b a n s , but focuses instead on the rhythmic values of the w o r d . T h e s e are the jitanjdforas, as codified by A l f o n s o Reyes: w o r d s w h o s e only value consists in the rhythmic aura they possess. In West Indies, Ltd. Guillen expands his setting and explores the C a r i b b e a n as a region defined by a c o m m o n history that included slavery and economic and commercial exploitation. T h i s is the b o o k that best represents Guillen's pivotal switch to a poetry that explicitly rejects the imperialist actions of the colonial p o w e r s in the C a r i b b e a n . His later b o o k s continued in this line, as in Cantos para soldados y sones para turistas, and La paloma del vuelo popular. After the triumph of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n in 1959, Guillen became a national s y m b o l , and his poetry dealt w i t h the concrete historical situations of revolutionary society. T h i s post-revolutionary period in Guillen's poetry has been superfi cially read by critics mainly for its political commitment to the R e v o l u tion. Guillen's innovative experimentation w i t h form and poetic language had c o m e to an end in the radical shift of the cultural climate of the later 1930s. A s in N e r u d a , poetry for Guillen becomes a project, a w o r k i n g tool of the poet, one that expresses the political circumstance as registered by an individual subject. Guillen's persona, h o w e v e r , is not the solemn witness of history that defines N e r u d a . Guillen is a trickster, a playful #

336


Spanish American poetry: 1922—1975 m a n - a b o u t - t o w n portrayed in Tengo. T h e distance between him and N e r u d a may be seen in Guillen's exploration of history in El diario que a diario [The Daily Daily] (1972), a collection of poems and papers from the history of C u b a , assembled by a writer w h o engages in bibliographical games w i t h the reader. Guillen does not assume the voice of W h i t m a n , his " v o i c e " lies in the selection of materials of w h i c h his b o o k is c o m p o s e d . It may be seen as part of a wider historiographical project that also appears in R o q u e D a l t o n ' s Historias prohibidas de Pulgarcito - texts that m i x genres and that play w i t h our notions of history. It is important to state and underscore the importance of late projects such as The Daily Daily, because Guillen has been classified only within the confines of A f r o C a r i b b e a n poetry. It is A f r o - C a r i b b e a n poetry, on the contrary, that liberates Guillen into the wider sociopolitical context, one that w a s not necessarily pursued by other members of Guillen's generation w h o w r o t e in the same modality. T h e more national A f r o - C u b a n motif is transformed into the longing for a wider sense of identity in the Puerto Rican Luis Palés M a t o s ' s Tun tún de pasa y grifería, w h i c h opens w i t h "Preludio en B o r i c u a , " an invitation to a p a n - C a r i b b e a n dance. T h e familiar themes are all here: poems that emphasize rhythm while speaking of sugar cane exploitation, tourists searching for the exotic, and in the center of the tableau the suffering and exploited black m a n of the Antilles. T h e emphasis on thematics in this poetry may not underscore strongly enough the fact that both Guillen and Palés excel in variations of classical forms. Palés can create a line of perfect hendecasyllables, but these are accented in the last syllable (in effect, m a k i n g them dodecasyllabic according to the rules of Spanish syllabic versification) and the beat produces a rhythm unseen since D a r i o ' s most daring experiments. Palés's rhythmic experimentation is also accompanied by a strong sense of the social and economic poverty of the Puerto R i c a n milieu. In " P u e b l o " and in " T o p o g r a f í a " Palés assumes the poetic voice of quiet desperation. T h e trickster-poet, inviting the reader to an Antillean carnival, uncovers its underlying sadness. W e can read Palés in these poems prefiguring L e z a m a L i m a ' s notion of "lejanía," or distance, as one of the major artistic themes of literature produced in islands. Palés dreams of a distant and original place from w h i c h the C a r i b b e a n self is in exile. In his best p o e m s , he forces us to revisit his w o r k as a desire for that plenitude found somewhere else. It is impossible not to see the change in aesthetics that will occur around the 1940s w i t h o u t taking Surrealism into account, w i t h its emphasis on both personal and social liberation. A l t h o u g h the other avant-garde movements instigated political action within the realm of the social by imposing their aesthetics as a means to c o m b a t stagnant social mores, 337 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Surrealism w a s the m o v e m e n t that proposed a participation in the political order joined to an aesthetics of liberation. In a sense, most of the poets that have been discussed in this section s h o w traces of a contact w i t h Surrealism, if not in style at least in themes. T h i s is not only the case w i t h Pablo N e r u d a (whose poetry w a s nevertheless rejected by the Chilean surrealist group Mandragora), but also w i t h the poets of Contemporá neos, w h o prepared the w a y for the continuing presence of Surrealism in M e x i c o after 1950, and w i t h poets like Ballagas, Brull, and Guillen, w h o did the same for the generation grouped around Orígenes in the 1940s. T h e relationships between Surrealism and Spanish A m e r i c a are multifaceted and c o m p l e x - a system of echoes that are more nuanced than can be seen at first glance. T h e situation in C u b a and in M e x i c o is exemplary. It is in H a v a n a in 1928 that Alejo Carpentier publishes " E n la extrema avanzada. A l g u n a s actitudes del Surrealismo" as a critique of the previous A v a n t - G a r d e and a statement of adhesion to the idealist values of Surrealism. T h e French poet R o b e r t Desnos visited H a v a n a in 1928 and there he met Carpentier and the novelist M i g u e l A n g e l Asturias. H o w ever, not only did Surrealism not produce a unified m o v e m e n t in C u b a ; but, as it appears from the poetry of the generation of Ballagas and Brull, it cannot be found either in their style or in their actions on the cultural scene. In Ballagas it w a s perhaps the stronger influence of the C a t h o l i c church and his feeling of condemnation because of his homosexuality that prevented the poet from adopting a truly liberatory stance. A similar situation to that of C u b a might be seen in M e x i c o . A l t h o u g h M e x i c o w a s the preferred point of entry into A m e r i c a for many European Surrealists (Andre Breton, A n t o n i n A r t a u d , Benjamin Péret), its influence can be felt at this time mainly in the visual arts, and not in literature - M e x i c a n surrealist poetry starts only w i t h the generation of O c t a v i o Paz, after 1950. T h e unlikely start of a surrealist m o v e m e n t in Spanish A m e r i c a w a s Argentina, where it appears in the w o r k of A l d o Pellegrini and his journal Qué (Revista de Interrogantes) (1928-1930). Even here, there w a s no continued action upon the literary scene - the avant-garde g r o u p of the journal Martin Fierro, for e x a m p l e , w a s indifferent to the new credo propagated by Breton. Chile w a s the only country w i t h w h a t might be called a proper surrealist m o v e m e n t , although this occurred rather late (1941). Its poets w e r e Braulio A r e n a s , Enrique G ó m e z C o r r e a , and Jorge Cáceres. In Peru, José C a r l o s Mariátegui s a w the establishment of the surrealist g r o u p w i t h hope and promise, while at the same time he attacked Marinetti and Italian Futurists, w h o at this point had already allied themselves w i t h Italian Fascism. Vallejo, as w e have seen, c o m p l e tely rejected Surrealism. T h e Peruvian César M o r o (1903-1956) w a s one of the only poets w h o 338 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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totally allied himself w i t h Surrealism. M o r o ' s p o e m s anticipate the erotic vein that is explored later in the w o r k of O c t a v i o Paz, although stylistically their texts are different from each other. M o r o ' s poetry is reiterative, and it proceeds by an accumulation of elements chained to each other in line after line of verse. F r o m within the erotic setting, the p o e m calls attention to its o w n surface and texture in a voluptuous sequence of images. It is a poetry of nouns, of gestures that appear in a linguistic chiaroscuro. M o r o is a v o y e u r , and the fleeting images that he sees appear blurred to the eyes of the reader, as in the paintings of the Chilean Surrealist M a t t a . T h i s may be glimpsed by one of his lines from " O h furor el alba se desprende de tus l a b i o s , " one of the poems from La tortuga ecuestre: " Y o pertenezco a la sombra y envuelto en sombra y a z g o sobre un lecho de l u m b r e " ["I belong to the s h a d o w and w r a p p e d in s h a d o w I lie over a bed of fire"]. T h e s h a d o w s and s m o k e that seem to permeate M o r o ' s poetry extend also to a deliberate distance that he sought vis-á-vis the Spanish A m e r i c a n tradition. M o s t of his poetry w a s written in French, and he published during his life only three b o o k s of p o e m s , Le chateau de grisou, Lettre d'amour, and Trafalgar Square. A l t h o u g h his first p o e m s appeared in 1928 in Amauta, he lived in Paris from 1925 to 1934 (roughly contemporaneous to Vallejo), returned to L i m a in that year, and in 1938 w e n t to live in M e x i c o . Here he c o m p o s e d in Spanish some of his best p o e m s . T h e s e were published posthumously under the title La tortuga ecuestre y otros poemas 1924-1949. W e might link M o r o ' s choice of language to his homosexuality and to a desire to express himself openly in a different linguistic code. Y e t M o r o is still a very reticent poet in French, whereas some of his p o e m s in Spanish explore an eroticism far beyond that w h i c h can be seen in Villaurrutia or Salvador N o v o . M o r o ' s influence can be felt in another Peruvian poet, Emilio A d o l f o Westphalen (b. 1 9 1 1 ) . In an autobiographical text of 1974 entitled "Poetas en la L i m a de los años treinta" and collected in Otra imagen deleznable... - a c o m p e n d i u m of his poetry - Westphalen cites the reading of Eguren and of Vallejo's Trilce as decisive for the aesthetics of his first poetry, collected in Las ínsulas extrañas. T h r o u g h contact with the poets M a r t i n A d á n and X a v i e r A b r i l , Westphalen reads at that time Joyce's Work in Progress, fragments from T z a r a ' s UHomme Aproximatif, and Hebdomeros by G i o r g i o de C h i r i c o . Later, Westphalen met C a r l o s O q u e n d o , Juan Larrea, and Gilberto O w e n , and published his second b o o k , Abolición de la muerte. T h e s e t w o b o o k s and Belleza de una espada clavada en la lengua, a third compilation of poems written between 1930 and 1972, but only published within Otra imagen deleznable, comprise all of Westphalen's poetic output. Using language as an instrument capable of expressing its o w n silence, Westphalen explains: 339


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El silencio se pinta una extraña figura Medita en el destino de una línea para arriba. (Otra imagen deleznable, 19) [Silence paints for itself a strange figure It meditates in the destiny of a line moving upwards.] Westphalen's p o e m s o w e much to C h i r i c o ' s empty city landscapes. His is a poetry of objects placed discretely on the line; his repetitions mainly fragmentary visions that stand on their o w n - passionate within their o w n separation. T h e influence of Surrealism may also be felt in the U r u g u a y a n poet Sara de Ibáñez (b. 1910), generally included as a member of the pre-Spanish Civil W a r generation, although her first b o o k of p o e m s , Canto, w a s published w i t h a prologue by Pablo N e r u d a , w h o is generally credited w i t h having " d i s c o v e r e d " her. Ibáñez's poetry is more in line w i t h that written by the C u b a n group Orígenes. Hers is an original combination of Spanish G o l d e n A g e Culteranismo and Surrealism, a hermetic poetry w i t h classical undertones in its penchant for a well-turned line of verse. Ibáñez's sonnets in Canto remind us of L e z a m a ' s search for an insular, i.e., C u b a n , teleology. T h e s e are p o e m s w h o s e constant image is that of light: objects illuminated by a controlled nightmarish vision where passion and discipline are joined.

Languages

of

poetry

T h e change in poetic language that critics place around the beginning of the 1940s is the result of a new generation of poets born between 1910 and 1923. T h e s e are poets like José L e z a m a L i m a ( C u b a , 1910—1976), Pablo A n t o n i o C u a d r a (Nicaragua, b. 1912), O c t a v i o Paz ( M e x i c o , 1914), N i c a n o r Parra (Chile, b. 1914), and C i n t i o Vitier ( C u b a , b. 1921). T h e w o r k of the poets of this younger generation overlaps w i t h that of older poets like N e r u d a and Guillen, w h o at this point change their poetic style and aesthetics to modes that they will continue until the 1970s. T h e aesthetics of this period range from the hermeticism of L e z a m a L i m a to the colloquialisms of N i c a n o r Parra, from the N i c a r a g u a n scenes of Pablo A n t o n i o C u a d r a to the metaphysical and " s i m p l e " language of Vitier. T h e language of these poets is progressively nearer to " c o l l o q u i a l " language. Because at first it seems impossible to characterize this g r o u p , criticism underscored its heterogeneity. L a c k i n g the sense of violent rupture of the first A v a n t - G a r d e , this generation w a s marked at different points and in different w a y s by their search for history, poetic language, and national expression. Some, like C u a d r a , delineate the basic themes of 340



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their poetry early on. Others, like O c t a v i o Paz and N i c a n o r Parra, change their poetics over time. T h e poets of 1940 reassess the tradition of Modernismo and the A v a n t G a r d e , they construct a n e w literary m y t h o l o g y as to poetic origins. T h e political atmosphere of the times forced Spanish A m e r i c a n s to return h o m e from the developing European conflicts that led to the Second W o r l d W a r , and to re-examine their tradition. For established poets at this time, their precursors were the Modernistas; for the younger poets, their sense of tradition truly starts w i t h the A v a n t - G a r d e , a more cosmopolitan and violent reaction that also spoke the language of poets w h o lived in w h a t w e r e n o w the burgeoning cities in Spanish A m e r i c a cities that were undergoing a publishing b o o m , w i t h the creation of major editorial houses w i t h a market for poetry. T h e best e x a m p l e of a change in poetic aesthetics can be seen in anthologies published at this time. Because Laurel is the most comprehensive and ambitious of these it is the one w e should examine. Anthologies mask a change in poetic sensibility; they give account of a process. Laurel w a s precisely representative of its time: it unites both sides of the Atlantic in a c o m m o n poetic tradition, that w a s highlighted by the emigration of prominent Spanish poets and intellectuals to the A m e r i c a s after the Spanish Civil W a r . A l t h o u g h Laurel w a s compiled by a S p a n i s h A m e r i c a n team of X a v i e r Villaurrutia, José Bergamin, O c t a v i o Paz, and Juan G i l Albert, Paz has recently stated in an afterword that the criteria for inclusion and the aesthetic narrative contained within the anthology were chiefly Villaurrutia's. T h e history of the exclusions and inclusions (including N e r u d a ' s and L e ó n Felipe's refusal to participate in the anthology) has been ably rendered by Paz, w h o w a s not only a witness of the time but also a member of the younger generation that w a s excluded, at the last minute, from the anthology. T h e different sections of Laurel illustrate h o w poets w h o were already established in 1940 understood their o w n tradition. T h e historical roots of these poets had their point of origin in the Post-modernismo of R a m ó n L ó p e z Velarde, followed by the various currents of the A v a n t - G a r d e , and concluding w i t h the later currents of poesía pura as inherited by Spanish A m e r i c a n poets from Juan R a m ó n Jiménez. T h i s change in literary inheritance underscores another that is present not so much in the manner of writing as in the themes and projects that seduce these poets. T h e poets included in Laurel are concerned w i t h the expression of their interior selves in relation to the w o r l d . T h e poets after Laurel will be preoccupied w i t h particular acts of poetry within a changing sociopolitical context. If change is signaled w i t h transparent clarity in Laurel, it w a s already evident in C u b a , where Juan R a m ó n Jiménez had defined and chronologi341



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cally framed an aesthetics by creating an anthology of the most important C u b a n poets of the time. T h e generation grouped around the Revista de Avance had published its most important b o o k s of poetry by 1937: M a r i a n o Brull's Poemas en menguante (1928), Emilio Ballagas's Júbilo y fuga (1931), Eugenio Florit's Doble acento (1937), and N i c o l á s Guillen's Cantos para soldados y sones para turistas. A c c o r d i n g to C i n t i o Vitier's recounting of the period in his introduction to the Obras completas of José L e z a m a L i m a , C u b a n poetry at the time fell into three fundamental categories: poesía pura, A f r o - C u b a n poetry, and poetry of social c o m m i t ment ("pura, negra y s o c i a l " ) , with the latter t w o fundamentally con flated. In L o cubano en la poesía, a series of lectures Vitier offered at the L y c e u m in H a v a n a from O c t o b e r 9 to D e c e m b e r 1 3 , 1 9 5 7 and published in b o o k form in 1958, he devotes a w h o l e chapter to that m o m e n t of C u b a n poetry. T h e title of this chapter underscores the importance Vitier attaches to this revisionary generation: " H e i g h t e n i n g of Creative A m b i tion. T h e Poetry of José L e z a m a L i m a and the A t t e m p t at an Insular T e l e o l o g y . " Even from the distance of almost twenty years, it is evident that w h a t w a s at stake for this generation w a s a complete rewriting of the C u b a n tradition. Lo cubano en la poesía is precisely the account of that teleological revision of C u b a n poetry, one that goes back in history in order to discover the essential elements of a C u b a n sensibility that w a s truly defined from 1940 on. In the same w a y that Paz classifies Villaurrutia's historical narrative of poetry in Laurel as the product of the search for precursors by a particular generation, Vitier's b o o k is the testimony of a profound rewriting of C u b a n letters. F r o m the philological point of view, 1940 is the point of origin of such a narrative. Little justice can be done here to such a fundamentally pivotal b o o k as Lo cubano en la poesía, but w e can examine w h a t poets at the time s a w in their precursors by reading Vitier's testimony. Vitier portrays the generation that immediately preceded him (Brull, Florit, and Ballagas) as living within strictly personal and closed spheres, stating that their poetry w a s confining and that it lacked a sense o f impulse. For Vitier, it w a s fundamentally an epigonic poetry that imitated or drew sustenance from that of L o r c a , Alberti, Jorge Guillen, Salinas, C e r n u d a , and A l e i x a n d r e in Spain. T h e only poet w h o for Vitier w a s still relevant for the new generations w a s Juan R a m ó n Jiménez, and this is w h y Vitier dates the beginning of a n e w poetic discourse to L e z a m a L i m a ' s Muerte de Narciso and his Coloquio con Juan Ramón Jiménez. In the former w o r k , L e z a m a writes an authentic tour de force-, a long, c o m p l e x p o e m that is ambitious and monumental in scope. L e z a m a ' s p o e m is like an object in itself, not a mere representation in language of feelings and ideas, a w o r k of art painstakingly elaborated w i t h a dense rhetorical language that constantly surprises and baffles readers. L e z a m a ' s meta342 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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phors are conveyed in a language that is highly ornamental and elaborate: it is an attempt to g o beyond the historical, to a mythical time of origination. In Coloquio, L e z a m a engages in a fictive dialogue w i t h the Spanish master, and argues for the particular sensibility of the insular condition, one that is inherited from Joyce and Frobenius. It is from this point on that L e z a m a launches a critique o f C u b a n culture that amounts to a final death knell for the issues of cosmopolitanism versus nationalism. H o w important L e z a m a ' s aesthetics w e r e for the n e w generations of poets can be g a u g e d by Vitier's statement that L e z a m a reacted to the frustrations o f the immediate C u b a n situation by submerging himself in the arcane w o r l d o f culture. L e z a m a ' s remoteness is evident in the impressive erudition of his first collection, Enemigo rumor. G a r c i l a s o , G o n g o r a , Q u e v e d o , San Juan de la C r u z , L a u t r é a m o n t , Surrealism, Valéry, C l a u d e l , and R i l k e are all part of L e z a m a ' s range of allusion. A c c o r d i n g to Vitier, the title illustrates L e z a m a ' s definition of poetry: it is a center that devours, that incarnates as an enemy, but that as an enemy, is able to enter into a communicative act w i t h the poet. T h i s metaphysical definition of poetry separates L e z a m a from the cultural projects of the 1940s. It is a distance felt more acutely if w e c o m p a r e this poetry to the emerging project of N e r u d a ' s Canto general, w h e r e the poet immersed himself in Western cultural references in order to search for the origins of Spanish A m e r i c a by rejecting the European f r a m e w o r k . L e z a m a , in direct opposition to N e r u d a , mobilized culture in free verse, in A l e x a n d r i n e sonnets, in quotations from Rilke and St. T e r e s a , and in historical scenes like " S a n Juan de Patmos ante la puerta latina" and " O r d e n a n z a del M a r q u é s de A c a p u l c o . " T h e s e p o e m s are interspersed w i t h C u b a n scenes, in an attempt to capture the essence o f a sensibility w i t h o u t concern for its external elements. L e z a m a , in other w o r d s , is not a poet o f ecfrasis, that is to say, his poetry does not address an object, but rather tries to incorporate it. A s Vitier states in his c o m m e n t a r y on " N o c h e insular: jardines invisibles," L e z a m a w a n t s to incorporate the essence of night, and not the night as topically rendered. In " E l arco invisible de V i n a l e s " from La fijeza, L e z a m a not only writes a b o u t w h a t he sees but a b o u t h o w to see: Sus ojos, como un canario que se introduce, atraviesan la pasta de los olores, remeros del sueno alii donde la luna entreabre el valle y cierra el portal. {La fijeza, 122-3) [Their eyes, like a canary that breaks in cut across the paste of smells, rowers of dreams there, where the moon half-opens the valley and closes the porch.] 343



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In "Pensamientos en L a H a b a n a , " also from La fijeza, L e z a m a addresses the issue of culture in the A m e r i c a s , in a manner that w o u l d reappear in the essays of La expresión americana (1957). L e z a m a not only ends the stanzas of his p o e m w i t h quotes from Eliot or M a l l a r m é but argues precisely for a global A m e r i c a n expression based on the situation of the poet: Si no miramos la vitrina, charlan de nuestra insuficiente desnudez que no vale una estatuilla de Ñapóles. Si la atravesamos y no rompemos los cristales, no subrayan con gracia que nuestro hastío puede quebrar el fuego y nos hablan del modelo viviente y de la parábola del quebrantahuesos. Ellos que cargan con sus maniquíes a todos los puertos . . . Ellos no quieren saber que trepamos por las raíces húmedas del helécho. (La fijeza 37-8) [If we don't look at the storefront, they speak of our insufficient nakedness, not worth a Neapolitan statuette. If w e cross it and do not shatter the glass they do not underline with grace that our weariness may crack the fire and they talk to us about the living models and the parabolas of the lammergeier. They, w h o carry their dummies to all ports . . . They do not want to k n o w that we climb the humid roots of the fern.] By means of this dense allegorical poetry L e z a m a continually surprises his readers. H e presents the A m e r i c a n poet l o o k i n g into a kind of w i n d o w of culture, debating whether to l o o k or not. For L e z a m a , if A m e r i c a n poets d o not l o o k , others will talk about their " n a k e d n e s s . " Y e t , if poets traverse that transparent space symbolized by the glass of the storefront, where time and place are rendered meaningless, none remark h o w they can break through the threatening fires of living models. T h e problem is condensed by L e z a m a w i t h purposely allusive and obtuse metaphors, since the A m e r i c a n poet bites into the " o t h e r ' s " style (meaning the poets of Europe) by surreptitiously climbing "the humid roots of a fern." T h e p o e m resembles the project of Eliot's " T h e L o v e Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," from w h i c h L e z a m a quotes a number of lines. It is the statement of the poet in relation to his context, and proposes a model for the A m e r i c a n poet's exchange with European culture. If the thoughts and w o r k s of this naked A m e r i c a n poet that L e z a m a reveals in "Pensamientos en L a H a b a n a " do not have the cultural weight of a N e a p o l i t a n statuette, L e z a m a will create out of the insular condition a point of origin for an imaginary time. His universe is populated by cultural objects apprehended by taking into account all of the objects' cultural associations. L e z a m a ' s universe is private and unique p a r a d o x i 344



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cally because of the cultural ground on w h i c h it exists, and because of the associations that it evokes. T h e fabric of L e z a m a ' s poems is made up of symbols that, through constant naming and repetition by the poet acquire the consistency of referents that belong to a poetic system of the author's devising. L e z a m a is a poet of hidden codes, hermetic in a more conven tional w a y than N e r u d a . L e z a m a transmitted his appeal to members of his generation in the vastly important Orígenes (1944-1956), a journal where abstract poetics, lyricism, and philosophical speculation meet. A m o n g the contributors to the journal were Cintio Vitier, Fina García M a r r u z , Elíseo D i e g o , L o r e n z o García V e g a , Virgilio Pinera, and Alejo Carpentier. Translations of T . S. Eliot, St. John Perse, and W a l l a c e Stevens appeared next to essays that debated or posited the creation of a national C u b a n culture from w i t h o u t the realm of the strictly political circumstance. A l t h o u g h in a number of editorials L e z a m a did refer to a progressive sense of the disintegration of C u b a n life, the journal refused to enter into the polemical situation of insular politics. Instead, L e z a m a articulated an idea of nationality as a metaphysical construction. T h i s is w h y Orígenes did not emphasize the idea of literary generations and claimed to be a space that w a s liberated from the chronological dependencies of the generational continuum. T w o generations of C u b a n poets and artists are represented in Orígenes. T h e project of Orígenes seems to have appeared full-grown, w i t h little if any variations over time, like L e z a m a ' s poetry itself. In the Coloquio con Juan Ramón Jiménez, L e z a m a has the Spanish poet state the t w o dangers of poetry at the time as that of the "escritura i n f o r m e " versus a " r e n e w e d N e o c l a s s i c i s m . " T h e s e being he t w o antagonistic poles of writing that L e z a m a and Vitier faced, they opted for a middle ground. L e z a m a tempered his Surrealism w i t h a classical bent, while at the same time he developed a long poetic line that is precisely un-musical, guided by a particular a-rhythmia by virtue of its accumulation of w o r d s and images. A t the same time, L e z a m a never abandoned the traditional meters of the sonnet, or the romance. A s Juan R a m ó n Jiménez says, via L e z a m a , in the Coloquio, the important poetic forms of the time are the romance, the " c a n c i ó n , " and free verse, all these giving an impression of plenitude, but rendered in a precise language {Obras completas, 11:63). A l t h o u g h in his use of traditional meters L e z a m a f o l l o w e d the e x a m p l e of Jiménez and, particularly in his last b o o k of p o e m s , Fragmentos a su imán, offered the readers delightful baroque décimas, his poetry is characterized by its twisted syntax and unexpected turns of phrase; by the primacy of a metaphor that doubles or triples signifiers to an elusive signified. T h e influence of this poetry in the wider Spanish A m e r i c a n literary scene w o u l d not be felt until after the 1960s, particularly w i t h the publication of L e z a m a ' s Paradiso (1966), a major Spanish A m e r i c a n novel of w h i c h 345



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various chapters had appeared in Orígenes. It w a s then that L e z a m a w a s recognized throughout the Spanish-speaking w o r l d as a major figure w h o had, over the course of three decades, developed a unique aesthetics in his poetry and devised a poetic system that rewrote the major issues of A m e r i c a n cultural expression. A l t h o u g h Orígenes w a s L e z a m a ' s creation, the poets w h o collaborated in it did not necessarily follow L e z a m a ' s style, nor his c o m p l e x allusive system. Vitier's poetry w a s still closer to Jimenez's in the 1930s, and it is only in his second b o o k , Sedienta cita (1943), and his third, Extrañeza de estar (1945), that w e can see the presence of L e z a m a ' s style and aesthetics, particularly the themes of distance and nostalgia - hence his references in De mi provincia to vaguely mythological echoes of sphinx and king inscribed under the wider mythos of insularity. Some of Vitier's and L e z a m a ' s experiments in form occur at similar times - for e x a m p l e , L e z a m a ' s exploration of the prose p o e m in Aventuras sigilosas and, more consistently, in La fijeza, and Vitier's Capricho y homenaje (1946). A l t h o u g h most of the Orígenes poets stayed in C u b a after the R e v o l u tion, their situation w a s drastically altered by the politics of the revolutionary government. Vitier in particular revised the social positions of L e z a m a and the journal, and responded to the repeated critiques on the ivory t o w e r mentality of Orígenes. Vitier explains that their lack of commitment revealed a prescient political instinct, since "none of the options available at the time w a s linked to the real needs of the c o u n t r y " (Obras completas, 1: xxvii - Vitier's emphasis). H o w e v e r , this is another Vitier speaking, trying to bridge the gap between t w o different visions of the relationship between poetry and society. T h e fact is that the poets of Orígenes assumed the C u b a n condition in a different vein. L e z a m a ' s assertion of a poetics that began from an atemporal and ahistorical origin clashed w i t h a different version of modernity as this w a s practiced by a poetry that after 1959, put its emphasis on the present, in all senses of the w o r d . It might seem p a r a d o x i c a l that a g r o u p that w a n t e d to defy the notion of generations felt the impact of a generational change after the Revolutionary years. In relation to the social commitment of the new poets w h o w r o t e after 1959, Vitier's idea of c o m m u n i t y in solitude jars with the poetical sensibility of the 1960s. In " M u n d o , " Vitier explains: El heroismo no es otra cosa que saber que la indecible soledad es la comunidad inmensa (Antología poética, 100) [Heroism is nothing else but to k n o w that the unmentionable solitude is the immense community.] A l t h o u g h the poets and writers of Orígenes

initiated a revolution in

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C u b a n culture, theirs w a s not the vision of revolution nor of society that w a s at issue after 1959. A different version of the project for a national poetry that arises from the political circumstances of the 1930s and 1940s can be seen in N i c a r a g u a ' s Pablo A n t o n i o C u a d r a (b. 1912). C u a d r a w a s one of the members of the N i c a r a g u a n Movimiento de Vanguardia (1928-1934), w h i c h appeared later in N i c a r a g u a than in other Spanish A m e r i c a n countries, and w a s able to incorporate the more daring cosmopolitan experimentation of their precursors to a particular national context. T h a t the N i c a r a g u a n A v a n t - G a r d e manifested an early preoccupation w i t h the national situation is undoubtedly due to the fact that it w a s active in a period of social and political unrest, contemporaneous to the United States' intervention and Sandino's revolutionary struggle. C u a d r a ' s second b o o k , Poemas nicaragüenses 1930-1933, illustrates this vanguardist moment by means of a poetry close to the earth and to c o m m o n speech. A s a reaction to his compatriot R u b é n D a r i o ' s exquisite linguistic plays and exotic locales, C u a d r a discovered the landscape and the people of his country. T h e national "spirit" that C u a d r a evokes has been read by equating its emancipatory politics as directed t o w a r d that same c o m m o n man to w h o m Sandino addressed himself. C u a d r a ' s subsequent b o o k s , a m o n g them El jaguar y la luna [The jaguar & the Moon] have a l w a y s been firmly rooted in N i c a r a g u a . It is a poetry that transcends the concrete political situation by framing the landscape and its inhabitants within a stylized humanistic understanding. T h r o u g h o u t , C u a d r a does not only deal w i t h the present: in El jaguar y la luna he rescues Amerindian legends, and in Cantos de Cifar [Songs ofCifar and the Sweet Sea] he writes of an ahistorical, epic present. F r o m his first b o o k s to these latter collections, C u a d r a moves from the more concrete N i c a r a g u a n situation to a spiritual search for a syncretic myth that joins the G r e c o - R o m a n w o r l d w i t h the M e s o a m e r i c a n universe. In Cifar, C u a d r a recounts the adventures of Cifar w h o , like a n e w Odysseus around the lakes of N i c a r a g u a , encounters situations and characters that resonate w i t h mythical allu sions. T h i s might be seen as the culmination of C u a d r a ' s poetic journey, one that originates from an attempt to resolve the oppositions between the regional and the cosmopolitan and that ends w i t h the fusion of the national and the universal, expressed by means of varied modes of expression: from the stylization of popular metric forms, to the long verse line w i t h biblical resonances. C u a d r a ' s Catholic belief in salvation and redemption invites compari son to the w o r k of L e z a m a and of other poets of Orígenes. In spite of their different styles, both poets proceed from deeply rooted religious convic tions, w h i c h account for the absence of the sense of violent rupture that 347



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w a s more prevalent in the first A v a n t - G a r d e . W e should also recall that C u a d r a , like many of the C u b a n poets, lived to see the national projects of the 1940s realized or reinterpreted in concrete movements of political struggle - in C u b a after 1959 and in N i c a r a g u a after 1979. T h e position of both these poets within these revolutions, a l l o w critics to examine the different re-writings of the national project from one generation to the next. A l t h o u g h L e z a m a remained silent in terms of the particular political situation - reverenced but at the same time internally ostracized by the system - C u a d r a became an outspoken critic of the Sandinistas w i t h o u t ever leaving N i c a r a g u a . A s a critic-from-within, C u a d r a ' s vision of Sandino clashed w i t h the social and political methods of the revolutionary party. A l l o w i n g for a number of differences in the political context between 1959 and 1 9 7 9 , the critical space that separates them from the revolutions that they lived within is emblematic of the g a p between the idea of culture as it w a s understood in the 1940s, and the M a r x i s t revision of the 1960s. T h e difference in L e z a m a ' s and C u a d r a ' s responses to the C u b a n and N i c a r a g u a n revolutions, the latter vocal while the former passive, belies their o w n difference from the generation that followed them. Social concerns, nationalism, and A m e r i c a n history can be seen in the poetry of R o s a r i o Castellanos (1925-1974), together w i t h a more ample vision that addresses the specific concerns of w o m e n in Spanish A m e r i c a n society. Castellanos's poetry moves from nation as myth to that of nation as socially constructed space. In this sense, her poetry adds to the register not only of Gabriela Mistral, but also to that of national projects that were later to be rooted in more abstract ideology. Castellanos specifically attacks the social space of w o m e n within the sexist constraints of society by means of w r y meditations on social habit and mores, as in " V a l i u m 1 0 " and " K i n s e y R e p o r t . " A poet of different modes, Castellanos is a b o v e all an observer and decoder. H e r keen eye for detail and language illuminates not only social reality but the relationship between aesthetics and the present. In the T u x t l a A r c h a e o l o g i c a l M u s e u m , Castellanos's encounter w i t h a w o r k of art, entitled " E l tejoncito m a y a , " equates the preC o l u m b i a n object w i t h childhood, the Indian universe to an unspoiled, free N a t u r e . T h e object belongs to the realm of innocence, and the poet asks for its return to the w o r l d of objects that a child uses: Cubriéndote la risa con la mano pequeña, saltando entre los siglos vienes, en gracia y piedra. Que caigan las paredes oscuras que te encierran, 348 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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que te den el regazo de tu madre, la tierra; en el aire, en el aire un cascabel alegre y una ronda de niños con quien tu infancia juegue. (Poesía no eres tú, 62) [Covering your laugh with a small hand, jumping among the centuries you come in grace and stone. Let the dark walls that confine you fall, let them give you the lap of your mother, the earth; in air, in air, a joyful bell and a round of children with w h o m your childhood can play.] In this p o e m , the laughter of the first verse is also to be understood as a kind of impish malice, joined to the puckish " s a l t a n d o " of the third line. W h a t the poet asks for in terms of the object is not only its return to a w o r l d where the idea of object does not exist (here rendered as childhood) but also, and more importantly, the return of the object to the space of the game. N o t only the object w i t h o u t the museum, but the object within the earth. Castellanos is not, h o w e v e r , a naive poet, she is a w a r e of the selfdefeating nature of her desire. T h e three stanzas of the p o e m are like three distinct moments. T h e y begin in sequence w i t h a certain discursive flow but end in strings of thoughts, with the " r o n d a " a repetition of that discursive flow of the beginning. Castellanos's almost Rilkean act of recovery and desire is part of a more general poetics that seems to flow out of N e r u d a ' s poems in the 1930s. H o w e v e r , Castellanos does not w o r k only in this mode. She is also a poet of social circumstance, and a keen observer of the social and sexual mores of society. If her early poetry has been characterized as more concerned w i t h the lyrical self, after Al pie de la letra, she discovers n e w registers of liberation both from the models of her symbolist and surrealist precursors and from the " i n t i m a t e " poetry that has been associated w i t h Spanish A m e r i c a n w o m e n poets. Y e t Castellanos defies the male literary strictures and cultivates a distinctly unsentimental and ironic tone. By the time Castellanos writes her more important w o r k in the 1950s, the language of Spanish A m e r i c a n poets had undergone a major change. L e z a m a w a s the 349



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major exception to this trend. T h e poetry written in the late 1950s is as different from L e z a m a ' s as L e z a m a ' s w a s different from G i r o n d o ' s . T h e change t o w a r d a more colloquial language can be dated as far back as 1954, with the publication of the Chilean N i c a n o r Parra's Poemas y antipoemas. Parra begins another poetic cycle in Chilean and Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry by deflating the poetics of his major precursors like H u i d o b r o , Mistral, and N e r u d a w i t h a sharp ironic stance, devoid of the romantic ego that his precursors inherited from W h i t m a n . T o read the other Chileans after reading Parra is to experience the p o w e r of the destructive turn that Parra makes explicit. In Poemas y antipoemas this is done by constructing the b o o k as a kind of poetic narrative: its first section c o m p o s e d of romantic, and post-modernista verse, the second of w h a t the poet has called expressionist p o e m s , and the third, finally, of the " a n t i p o e m a s " - deliberately colloquial and even " p r o s a i c " texts that question the underlying categorizations of poetry. Parra's b o o k illustrates a process of development where models invoked are at first imitated, then appear as a negative presence, from w h i c h he liberates himself and achieves his personal and original voice. T h i s m o v e t o w a r d a more colloquial expression has been explained by Parra as a reaction against the "poesia c a n t o " of Mistral and N e r u d a . Parra seeks to debunk metaphor and strip poems of those elements that m a k e them poetic. W h a t may appear as a simple act of poetic rebellion is actually an experience of a state of being, for Parra's poems d o depend upon and refer directly to the precursors' tone and voice. Instead of eliminating verse altogether, Parra's uncanny procedure consists of presenting texts that retain their visual arrangement as poetry. T h e " a n t i " is essentially a rejection of content and style. By thus inscribing his poetry as a reaction, Parra is able to create a particular state of being: permanent in its opposition, at best it seeks to compile a totally different dictionary for poetic expression. In " C a m b i o s de n o m b r e , " Versos de salon is inaugurated by a defiant gesture that recalls that of H u i d o b r o , w h o defines A l t a z o r as an " a n t i p o e t " : M i posicion es esta: El poeta no cumple su palabra Si no cambia los nombres de las cosas [My position is this: The poet does not stand by his word If he doesn't change the name of things] Parra follows H u i d o b r o ' s rebellion against poetic language, even if he w o u l d probably see H u i d o b r o ' s procedure as an eminently poetic w a y of going about effecting a change in poetry. Both poets, nevertheless, inscribe themselves into their poetry - H u i d o b r o by uniting his p o e m s to his image

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and project as a Vanguardist, and Parra by the constant allusion to his image and self as " e v e r y m a n . " Y e t whereas H u i d o b r o ' s changes obey a particular development and even discourse, Parra's w o r k has a truly dismembered form, as it appears in " R o m p e c a b e z a s . " H e expresses his poetics by stating: " Y o digo una cosa por o t r a " ["I say one thing for another"] (Poemas, 1981: 83). Parra's continuing poetic and antipoetic w o r k s , collected in Obra gruesa, have followed a similar line w i t h o u t much departure, except for the more lyrical Canciones rusas. It w o u l d be impossible not to state that Parra is also a poet of humor, and he reminds us that the universe as a w h o l e might feel pleasure or pain, but only h u m a n beings are able to laugh. T h e charged nature of this statement accounts for Parra's eminent humanity, for his self-deprecative humor. Parra's antipoetry of 1953 almost coincides in historical terms w i t h one of N e r u d a ' s multiple changes in poetic form, as s h o w n in Odas elementales, and his later Estravagario. T h i s urge t o w a r d a general stripping d o w n of poetry corresponds to a progressive critique in the search for w h a t poetry is. In other w o r d s , if N e r u d a ' s Residencia seemed impure in 1935, it had b e c o m e rhetorical in the 1950s.

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T h r o u g h o u t the twentieth century, Spanish A m e r i c a n poets have rejected the language of their precursors precisely because of the fact that it is poetic language. Parra's reaction to the rhetoric of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry is emblematic of the reaction that follows in the 1960s, where "literariness" itself is at issue. T h i s antagonism against literariness is tied to the political commitment of poets like Ernesto C a r d e n a l , R o q u e D a l t o n , F a y a d Jamis, and Heberto Padilla. T h e s e poets are all united by their participation in the social arena. Ernesto C a r d e n a l w a s Minister of Culture in N i c a r a g u a during the Sandinista G o v e r n m e n t , R o q u e D a l t o n died while a clandestine guerrilla fighter, H e b e r t o Padilla's poetry w a s published by Fidel C a s t r o ' s revolutionary government, although the poet w a s eventually censored and ostracized. T h i s aesthetic change has been identified w i t h the political turmoil of the 1960s, and is part of a general pattern throughout the United States, Europe, and Spanish A m e r i c a . If the political context is more present in Spanish A m e r i c a n poets than in others, it is as a result of events close to h o m e and ideologies that spoke to issues important to Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals. T h e s e were the years of the triumph of the C u b a n R e v o l u tion, and the promise of more social changes to c o m e , in Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, N i c a r a g u a , and El Salvador. Poets participated in the w o r k of defining Spanish A m e r i c a n culture by, in some cases, taking poetry to the 35i



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streets, or speaking clearly and directly about the social problems at hand. In aesthetic terms, this politicization has to be seen within the context of the Spanish A m e r i c a n poetic tradition since Modernismo, as exemplified in R u b é n D a r í o ' s Cantos de vida y esperanza, where an explicitly critical vision of the United States is joined to the promises of a united continental ideal. Poets in the 1960s preferred this later version of D a r í o to the earlier poet of twilight and delirious fancy, even if they also emphasized their distance from D a r í o ' s more anachronistic appeals to the Hispanic " r a c e . " W h i l e Spanish A m e r i c a n poets revised Modernismo, the C u b a n R e v o lution r e a w a k e n e d the interest in José M a r t í as the Revolutionary model of the poet within a political struggle. M a r t í ' s Modernismo was always C u b a n and also Pan-Americanist, and of a much less fantastic nature than D a r í o ' s . T h e s e t w o models underscore the shift in Spanish A m e r i c a n s ' visions of poetic tradition. T h e critical revision of Modernismo entailed the rejection of the " c o s m o p o l i t a n " A v a n t - G a r d e and its linguistic games; the latter Vallejo w a s emphasized as the one w h o overcame the brief temptation of the language poetry of Trilce; the latter N e r u d a erased the more melancholic poet of Residencia en la tierra. In an attempt to m a k e their poetry a more immediate object w i t h revolutionary potential, the poets of the 1960s actually continue, in a different m o d e , the debate as to where poetry fits within the modern w o r l d . Since the A v a n t - G a r d e , poetry has tried to find a w a y in w h i c h to exist and reflect modernity: H u i d o b r o and José Juan T a b l a n d a made p o e m s that resembled paintings, G i r o n d o w r o t e poems that could blend w i t h a ride in a city tram, and Borges mapped out the city of Buenos Aires for its citizens. It w o u l d be a mistake to imply that the c o m m o n aesthetics that unites poets like C a r d e n a l , D a l t o n , and H e r a u d w a s only the desire to fight a revolutionary w a r or give voice to the dispossessed. Ernesto C a r d e n a l , for example, intends a much more profound meditation on the position of the individual within historical change that b o r r o w s from models as dispar ate as Ezra Pound and Pablo N e r u d a . Cardenal reads classical poetry as it is filtered by Pound's urge to " m a k e it n e w . " H e resurrects the epigram, writes in imitation of biblical psalms, rescues Central A m e r i c a n myths, and writes a documentary historical epic, El estrecho dudoso. H e may start a p o e m by imitating a classic stanza in rhythm and form, its w o r d s imitating sounds from each other, only to undo such classical imitation by naming a random collection of objects from everyday life with an abrupt act of closure that seems to belie the p o e m ' s desire for resurrection: Detrás del monasterio, junto al camino, existe un cementerio de cosas gastadas, en donde yacen el hierro sarroso, pedazos de loza, tubos quebrados, alambres retorcidos, cajetillas de cigarrillo vacías, aserrín 352 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Spanish American poetry: 1922-1975 y zinc, plástico envejecido, llantas rotas, esperando como nosotros la resurrección. (Cobo Borda, Antología de la poesía hispanoamericana, 324) [Behind the monastery, next to the road, there is a cemetery of worn out things, where there lie corroded iron, pieces of tile, broken tubes, twisted wires, empty cigarette packs, sawdust and zinc, aged plastic, broken tyres, waiting as we are for the resurrection.] W h a t is interesting here is Cardenal's rendering of objects that are emblems for contemporary industrial civilizations as a collection of the detritus that is produced in the present. T h e s e are objects w i t h a utilitarian function - iron, tubes, wires - or at least that have served their function (sawdust, broken tyres, aged plastic) but that live in a curious afterlife. O n e feels that C a r d e n a l w a n t s these objects to become relics in a museum, pieces of a destroyed civilization. It is in that sense that he speaks of a resurrection - the object itself at this point inserted in the inexorable march of time. W e can compare this to N e r u d a ' s desire for an impure poetry, but Cardenal names the objects w i t h o u t metaphorizing them. T h e resurrection Cardenal longs for is the resurrection that is already prefigured in his p o e m : the resurrection of the object as an image. T h i s is also prefigured by Hora 0, where Cardenal speaks of the nights of M a n a g u a by means of a series of linked ideogrammatic scenes of a mysterious and alluring p o w e r . It is also present in a poignant statement in " M a n a g u a 6:30 P . M . , " where the poet contemplates the neon signs that light up the streets of M a n a g u a ' s night. N e o n lights, V e n u s , and the m o o n are joined together in this short piece where even the red lights of the automobiles are " m y s t i c a l . " Cardenal prepares us for the sudden out pouring of upper-case signs that imitate the neon signs that he sees. Offcentered to the right of the page, readers can see in them a static hieroglyphic of contemporaneity that can only be read by having access to the codes of transnational capitalism. By the mystical atmosphere created in the p o e m , signs become images, and these particular images are syndecdoques of time, a violent present that is the very definition of modernity. T h e particular distance of the observer surmounts the present. Cardenal exclaims: Y si he de dar un testimonio sobre mi época es éste: Fue bárbara y primitiva pero poética. (Nueva antología poética, 68)


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[And if I am to give witness of my age it is this: It was barbaric and primitive but poetic] W h a t Cardenal implies or means here by poetic is similar to Walter Benjamin's visions of the creations of capitalism: an effect of deliberate and almost willful anachronism and even nostalgia that is reflected in the poem. T h e fundamentally religious atmosphere that surrounds Cardenal's poetry w o u l d be hard to find in poets of the following generation, w h o came of age w i t h the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n of 1959. Cardenal himself saw the R e v o l u t i o n w i t h mystical fervor, and after the death of C h e G u e v a r a and a visit to C u b a , became totally involved in the defense of revolutionary governments from within a religious stance that links poets to the theology of political and social liberation. In contrast, the best poets of the revolutionary poetry of the 1960s, like Heberto Padilla and R o q u e D a l t o n , are less mystical and more ironic. Heberto Padilla (b. 1932) w a s one of the first affected by the cultural politics of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n . His b o o k , Fuera del juego, w a s mired in controversy from the m o m e n t of its publication. Fuera del juego w a s a w a r d e d a prize in a poetry contest sponsored by the C u b a n Artists and Writers Union ( U N E A C ) in 1968. T h e organization expressed total disapproval of the judges' decision and published the b o o k w i t h a prefatory note that declared the w o r k "ideologically contrary to the R e v o l u t i o n . " Padilla w a s later forced into an act of self-recrimination and a confession of ideological sins, w h i c h created a definitive schism within the R e v o l u t i o n itself and w i t h intellectuals it had courted previously, w h o w r o t e public letters on Padilla's behalf. C a s t r o ' s reply came in a speech on April 3 0 , 1 9 7 1 , to the First N a t i o n a l Congress of Education and Culture in H a v a n a , w i t h a more nationalistic line and a rejection of the intellectuals' appeal. W h a t the judges had found n o t e w o r t h y in Fuera del juego w a s precisely the fact that it w a s not apologetic but critical, and that it accurately expressed the dilemmas of poets and poetry within a revolutionary context of rapid social change. Padilla does not write about history as a system of signs or cultural objects. His distance from L e z a m a can be felt in the fact that Padilla assumes history as p o w e r , and his b o o k deals precisely with poetry speaking to, and of, this p o w e r , w i t h a language as perversely direct as a w e a p o n . T h e game referred to in its title is one w h o s e rules are never controlled by poets themselves. T h i s is w h y Padilla sets the rules for his o w n in a direct, concise appeal, emanating from a generation that established itself from within the R e v o l u t i o n . Here one can find corrosive acts of self-violence perpetuated by p o w e r . In " H o m e n a j e a H u i d o b r o , " 354 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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included in Fuera del juego, Padilla debunks H u i d o b r o ' s Utopian project. For Padilla, poets do not need to have the rose flowering in the verse, as H u i d o b r o desired, but just leave it in the garden. It is the sarcastic h u m o r in w h i c h this is conveyed that eloquently upholds the scope of H u i d o b r o ' s Utopian project precisely as illusion. Padilla not only criticizes the delusion of poets; his violence is born out of w h a t he feels is the impossibility of his having that delusion himself. R o q u e D a l t o n (1935-1975) w a s committed to the desire for a socially and politically just order, both in Latin A m e r i c a and in his native El Salvador, and his life coincides w i t h a m o m e n t of cultural optimism and struggle. T h e critical assessment of his poetry has been marked by his life. A s a result of his being assassinated by a fringe faction of the left during his involvement as a clandestine guerrilla fighter, D a l t o n ' s poetry is only framed according to a political situation. H o w e v e r , w h a t is interesting in D a l t o n is not only this life in action, but its reflection on paper. Even while he insisted on our reading his p o e m s in the light of his revolutionary commitment, and did not argue for an illusory separation of poetry from the poet - or even of the poet from social circumstance - this m o n o l o g i c a l reading has closed other, more suggestive angles on his poetry. In La taberna y otros lugares, D a l t o n experiments w i t h the typographical rearrangement of verse that he takes from the Brazilian concrete poets in order to give an account of the situation in Prague before the invasion of Soviet troops in 1968. T h e p o e m ' s message is against the atmosphere of pessimistic nihilism that the poet has found in C z e c h y o u t h , but it is conveyed in a manner that incorporates the form used by Cardenal in Hora 0 and that D a l t o n also traces to the influence of Ezra Pound. Some of D a l t o n ' s more suggestive voices are found in poetry written during his years as a clandestine poet, collected in Poemas clandestinos. For D a l t o n uses here a procedure not unlike that of Fernando Pessoa's heteronyms, inventing " o t h e r " poets that write his poetry. V i l m a Flores, T i m o t e o Liie, Jorge C r u z , Juan Z a p a t a , and Luis L u n a are more than pseudonyms for D a l t o n . T h e i r poetry is distinguished by tone and theme, and appears w i t h a biography of the authors supplied by D a l t o n himself. Their m o d e of writing is a reflection of their social position, w i t h the predominant and best mode of D a l t o n ' s the satiric. Luis L u n a , for e x a m p l e , had studied architecture and p s y c h o l o g y , and had just c o m pleted an essay on the narrative of the Latin A m e r i c a n Boom before writing the p o e m s of his collection, " P o e m a s para vivir pensandolo b i e n . " D a l t o n ' s p o e m s are the most radical e x a m p l e of a total compromise between literature and politics. Because of their status as eminently political p o e m s they stand at the more interesting threshold of the political poetry produced during the 1960s. It is a poetry ferociously incapable of being tamed by any political ideology. Precisely because of



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D a l t o n ' s total commitment, it is impossible not to read him in his o w n terms, w i t h o u t at the same time engaging in the hagiographic exercises of his apologists. His poetry is a document of his time; its particular circumstance is w h a t will a l w a y s speak of a present. O c t a v i o Paz (b. 1914) is the major presence in M e x i c a n and contemporary Latin A m e r i c a n poetry of the 1960s and 1970s. T h e g r o u p of poets that c o m e of age after 1959 in M e x i c o o w e much of their inspiration to him and to the changes that take place in his poetry after the 1960s, surely Paz's most central and prolific decade. Paz started writing poetry in 1933 with a small b o o k of poems entitled Luna silvestre, and by 1950 had published his classic essay on M e x i c o , El laberinto de la soledad [The Labyrinth of Solitude]. Y e t although his poetry is written uninterruptedly after the 1930s, his w o r k consistently places itself as voluntarily epigonic, as the last in line of a particular discourse in Spanish A m e r i c a n letters. It is not only because of this strategic rearrangement of causality that O c t a v i o Paz should be placed at the end of this tradition (even if his major w o r k is produced in the 1960s), but because his w o r k and his on-going literature create the sense of an ending for a particular m o d e of modernity in Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry. T h e r e is Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry after O c t a v i o Paz: generations of poets w h o reject his legacy, and others that continue his line of experimentation. Nevertheless, the imprint that Paz has given to the tradition as a w h o l e will be w i t h us for years to c o m e . In a w a r d i n g O c t a v i o Paz the N o b e l Prize for Literature in 1991 for his w o r k ' s "sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity," the Swedish A c a d e m y recognized the M e x i c a n poet as one of the most influential voices in late twentieth-century letters. It w a s a recognition long overdue. For the past forty years, Paz has been Spanish A m e r i c a ' s most public and prolific essayist, cultural historian, poet, philosopher, and translator. In a sense, Paz has shaped and defined the role of the intellectual in contempor ary Spanish A m e r i c a ; he has been an active participant in the political and poetical battles of his time - a controversial man of letters w h o has struck a sensitive balance between public discourse and individual poetic expression. Paz's multi-layered texts engage the reader in a sophisticated dialogue between history, literature, and philosophy. A s an essayist, Paz is heir to a distinguished tradition in Hispanic letters, one that includes the Spanish philosopher José O r t e g a y Gasset and the M e x i c a n homme de lettres A l f o n s o Reyes, kindred spirits in the sheer multiplicity of their interests and in the inquisitive tradition of k n o w l e d g e that their w o r d s presuppose. Paz's essays on poetry and poetics, in particular El arco y la lira [The Bow and the Lyre] (1956) and Los hijos del limo (1974) [Children of the Mire], define modernity as a fragmented, multi-layered tradition of rupture in Western poetry, a suggestive p a r a d o x that for Paz is an emblem 356 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Spanish American poetry: 1922-1975 of our present condition. T o read Paz's writings on literature is to have a feel for connections that are well beyond time and place. H e joins in one sweeping phrase R u b e n D a r i o and M a t s u o B a s h o , Apollinaire's calligrams and the surviving codices of early M e x i c a n literature. Paz defines tradition (a m u c h maligned w o r d in the M o d e r n i s t s ' canon) not as a set of rules but as an open space for the dissemination and articulation of ideas. T h e same intellectual awareness that w e find in Paz's essays can be perceived in his poetry, in particular in his major collections to date, Libertad bajo palabra and Ladera este ["East S l o p e " ] . Poetry grounds the multiplicity of Paz's w o r k : it is a form of expression that Paz has transformed into the point of encounter between philosophy and aes thetics, thought and sensation, especially in his most ambitious p o e m s , Piedra de sol ["Sunstone"] and Blanco. T h e connections between the poetry and the rest of the w o r k can be seen in particular in Paz's reading of M e x i c o , a country re-created as a point of encounter between different civilizations. In El laberinto de la soledad, Paz has written the definitive w o r k on modern M e x i c o , a country that is for him as enigmatic as a p o e m can be. T h e traditional chronological arrangement does not offer, by itself, an adequate representation of the variety and consistency of Paz's w o r k at any given point in time. N o chronological approach w o u l d d o justice to the process of elaboration of, in particular, Libertad bajo palabra, in its various editions (1949, i960, 1968, 1 9 7 5 , 1988). Paz's major b o o k of poems g r o w s and branches out like a tree, and the various stages of its ordered c o m p o s i t i o n , of the additions and exclusions, can be related to the different periods in his poetics. Paz's poetry can be divided into three stages. T h e first culminates in Piedra de sol, where a temporal axis and figural play shape a p o e m that is grounded on a circular art object: the famous M e x i c a n stone calendar, n o w housed at the M u s e o de A n t r o p o l o g i a in the M e x i c o Federal District. T h e second can be seen in Paz's increasingly c o m p l e x cultural critique of the 1960s, in particular in Ladera este and Blanco, perhaps Paz's most ambitious p o e m , in w h i c h sense yields to sensation, and in w h i c h the category of translation is centralized as a literal metaphor for the act of writing - a p o e m that shapes Paz's vision of the interplay between East and W e s t , B o d y and W o r l d , A u t h o r and L a n g u a g e . T h e third takes place after his return to M e x i c o , and can be centered on the most important p o e m yet of the late period, " N o c t u r n o de San Ildefonso." Perhaps the most constant feature of Paz's w o r k is poetry of a selfreferential mode on language and poet. M a n y of Paz's p o e m s are meditations on the act of writing and on the p o w e r of w o r d s themselves, w i t h Paz constantly underscoring to his readers the fact that w e are reading a translation of a non-existent original. Paz is a poet w h o attempts


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to understand the particular materiality of the w o r d . T h i s can be seen w i t h peculiar clarity in his shorter p o e m s . For e x a m p l e , hieroglyphs or, as Paz also says, " g a r a b a t o s , " are overdetermined signs precisely because their indecipherability gives them a kind of materiality, of b o d y . T h i s is the essence of Paz's p o e m " G a r a b a t o " ["Scrawl"] from Salamandra: C o n un trozo de carbón con mi gis roto y mi lápiz rojo dibujar tu nombre el nombre de tu boca el signo de tus piernas en la pared de nadie En la puerta prohibida grabar el nombre de tu cuerpo hasta que la hoja de mi navaja sangre y la piedra grite y el muro respire como un pecho. [With a piece of charcoal with my broken crayon and my red pencil scrawling your name the name of your mouth the sign of your legs on nobody's wall O n the forbidden door engraving the name of your body till the blade of my knife bleeds and the stone screams and the wall breathes like a chest.] (Tr. Eliot Weinberger, The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 110-13) T h e poet's desire is underscored by the verbal infinitive "dibujar." T h e act is not w h a t is being described here, but the possibility of the act. T h e infinitive is not only the mark of a particular elasticity of the present, it is also w h a t separates the desire from the act. T h e poet is not painting the name of the m o u t h nor inscribing the name of the b o d y . T h e infinitive speaks of a possibility, of an act that is being performed in a theatrical space of violence, stolen a w a y the m o m e n t violence is committed. Between these syllables and in the interstices of this writing, the act takes place, and the p o e m is its translation, its oblique desire, and its realization, even if ultimately Paz appeals to another place, beyond language but also within language. T h e letters of this scrawl are being translated while they are written. 358



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A s an inheritor of the linguistic experimentation of the A v a n t - G a r d e , Paz constructs verbal objects in w h i c h the position of signifiers is as important as w h a t the signs mean. W h a t Paz forgoes are the more o b v i o u s traits of the A v a n t - G a r d e : instead of experimenting w i t h metaphor, Paz chooses instead to concentrate on form. In Piedra de sol and in Blanco Paz adjusts the p o e m s to an idea of order and form that, in the former, equates the number of lines to the lunar calendar of the Aztecs, and in the latter structures the p o e m according to a perversely hermetic interplay between numerology and chance. T h e s e experimentations by Paz follow a kind of gnostic belief in the p o w e r of the w o r d that he has examined in his Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fé (Barcelona, 1982) [Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz or the Traps of Faith] by projecting these preoccupations onto the w o r k of his M e x i c a n precursor. Piedra de sol is also a translation, but this time of an A z t e c object. It has been, w i t h o u t a doubt, one of the more closely read of Paz's w o r k s . It is a long p o e m on love, m e m o r y , w a r , death, and resurrection, told in 584 hendecasyllabic verses, a number that equals the number of days in the synodic revolution of the planet V e n u s . Paz's inscription of poetry within N a t u r e is part of his vision of the p o e m as a kind of poetic talisman, and it is this aspect w h i c h frames Paz's preoccupation w i t h form. T h e closest p o e m to Piedra de sol in the Spanish A m e r i c a n tradition is G o r o s t i z a ' s Muerte sin fin, and Paz's vision of cyclical time, of death and resurrection, where history and poetry m o v e like a spiral, may be seen as a version of G o r o s t i z a ' s apprehension of objects as evanescent impossibilities. Both G o r o s t i z a and Paz inscribe themselves within the context of Heideggerian p h e n o m e n o l o g y , and Paz's beginnings as a poet are shaped by the generation of Contemporáneos. Piedra de sol underscores a n e w cycle in Paz's poetry. T h i s new beginning will culminate in Ladera este and in Blanco. T h e latter is perhaps one of the more ambitious poems of twentieth-century Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry, while the former, Ladera este, invites comparisons to N e r u d a ' s Residencia en la tierra. Both of Paz's b o o k s and N e r u d a ' s were written in the Orient, although N e r u d a w a s much younger w h e n he served in Chile's foreign service while Paz w a s already a w e l l - k n o w n poet, w h o s e resignation from his country's diplomatic service after the government massacred student protesters in T l a t e l o l c o in 1968 w a s a well-publicized event. Y e t Paz's b o o k is not the chronicle of a season in Hell that Residence on Earth w a s for N e r u d a ' s stay in A s i a . M o r e responsive to their context than N e r u d a ' s b o o k , Ladera este and Blanco testify to a g r o w i n g fascination w i t h " o t h e r n e s s " in a multicultural perspective. Paz does not explore his lyrical self in the Orient but the relationship between culture and individuals, between East and W e s t , and between writing and N a t u r e . Ladera este is a conscious deciphering of the East, and


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the reader needs the textual apparatus provided by Paz's notes on the poems in order to decipher his more particular allusions. D u r i n g these years in the Orient, Paz w o r k s on the Symbolists' notion of correspon dence, as it w a s seen by Baudelaire: the universe is a system of c o m m u n i cating signs and the poet is the one w h o deciphers the hidden music of things by exploring and revealing their hidden relationships. H o w e v e r , Paz takes this notion a step further: he sees the same system of correspon dence, a vast n e t w o r k of rotating signs, not only in N a t u r e but in culture, in b o o k s , and in w o r k s of art. These ideas, w h i c h Paz has elaborated in a number of essays, also appear as themes in his poetry, particularly after Ladera este and, in particular, Blanco, where the p o e m at the same time s h o w s direct links to T . S. Eliot, to Tantric art and rituals, to abstract European art, and to M a l l a r m é . Paz surrenders himself to w h a t he sees. In Paz's conversational style at this time, the p o e m is written under a sort of luminous transparency, selfconscious of the fact that it is being written. It is a poetry that purposely introduces itself as self-evident, a revelation in the more exact sense of the w o r d . T h i s is w h y some p o e m s , like Piedra de sol and Blanco, obey very rigid constraints. N o w o r d can be out of place in these texts, they all seem measured, the elimination of one w o r d w o u l d topple the w h o l e edifice. Blanco's procedure is based on the combination and recombination of different p o e m s , in a scroll that is at the same time folded and unfolded, creating the illusion of multiplicity within an underlying unity to be found once the p o e m is unscrolled into a single page. Paz's remarks on h o w to read the p o e m d o not clarify h o w it w a s written, but the sequences of p o e m s obey a hidden principle of repetition given in multiples of four. Every four pages Paz writes t w o columns of p o e m s in red and black ink, and every time these appear they are followed by poems with eleven lines each. Some internal cohesion of the author's o w n devising can be found in these and other interplays of chance operations that may remind us of the music of John C a g e , to w h o m Paz dedicates one of the best poems of Ladera este. Blanco is a b o v e all an invented p o e m , as clarified by its compositor: El es El es El

espíritu una invención del cuerpo cuerpo una invención del mundo mundo

es una invención del espíritu [The spirit is an invention of the body T h e body is an invention of the world 360 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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The world is an invention of the spirit] (Tr. Weinberger, 329) T h i s chain of continual invention of spirit, b o d y , and w o r l d is reminiscent of the perpetually recommencing cycle of Piedra de sol. T h e link of invention has no end but continues its gyrations within its o w n circularity. It is perhaps a rebellion against closure that gives Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry the sense of a new beginning. T h a t the fractured language of self that inaugurates Spanish A m e r i c a n modernity arrives at a teleological moment in Paz's acceptance of the dissolution of the ego and at a similar point in L e z a m a ' s Fragmentos a su imdn, gives the issues of the self and language that have framed Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry during this period a temporary sense of closure, at the point in w h i c h there is a consciousness of a tradition assumed as a critical problem. It is this aspect w h i c h I w o u l d like to explore as a w a y of closing this period and talking about poetry after Paz. T h e moment of awareness of a tradition is fundamentally a critical moment. W h a t Paz's poetry underscores is precisely that poetry is a critical act of language. In the w o r k of Jose Emilio Pacheco (b. 1939), poetry becomes a lucid experiment, a critical questioning, a meditation on the p o w e r of later poets in the tradition. His poetry seems to have been created after the resolution of a problem. W e d o not find here the underlying problems of language and poet that have been a constant in Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry, or if w e d o find them, they appear under a different articulation. Both Paz and Pacheco already w o r k within a tradition that has been assumed as such. T h e i r collective reading of this tradition can be seen in the anthology Poesia en movimiento, Mexico 1915-1966, where Paz and Pacheco, along w i t h A l i C h u m a c e r o and H o m e r o Aridjis, read their precursors with a critical eye. O c t a v i o Paz, w h o writes the introduction and appears as the member of a second cluster that chronologically precedes the more recent generation c o m posed by Pacheco and Aridjis, is a w a r e that the originality of contempor ary M e x i c a n poetry consists in a critical reading of the tradition itself. Pacheco posits the role of the poet as a practical problem, his poetry is impersonal and ironic, but a l w a y s eminently critical. In N o me preguntes como pasa el tiempo [Don't Ask Me How the Time goes By] time appears as the concrete experience of history: the poet is an observer of historical time. Pacheco is involved not as a witness but as an observer of historical change. Pacheco refuses to engage in the more obvious rhetorical flourishes of Paz. It is, as critics have termed it, a purposely flattened-out style, a neutral register. A n awareness of this critical impasse where history and aesthetics 361 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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collide is w h a t characterizes the poetry of R o b e r t o Juárroz (Argentina, b. 1925), the author of seven volumes of poetry, published between 1958 and 1982, all entitled Poesía vertical [Vertical Poetry]. T h e r e are no proper names in this poetry: both the volumes and the p o e m s in them are numbered consecutively. A s Sucre has remarked (in La máscara, la transparencia), it is a poetry that seems to have no evolution, no change. Julio C o r t á z a r defined it as a poetry that proceeds by the inversion of signs, positing its o w n negation. Juárroz's poetry is abstract: an experi ment in form that avoids cultural reference and oblique or even o u t w a r d l y " e x p e r i m e n t a l " language. Verticality is assumed both in the geometric shape of poetry as well as in the progressive internalization of the language. Like G i r o n d o ' s " m a s m é d u l a , " " v e r t i c a l " for Juárroz is equiva lent to an interior of the verse - a kind of falling inside. In the w o r k of Juárroz w e see w h a t is best in the projects of H u i d o b r o , G o r o s t i z a , Borges, and Vallejo - the fact that w e have the outlines of an inquiry that is a l w a y s left unfinished. Whether it is the utopia of a language that erases the distinctions between political and aesthetic commitment, as in Vallejo, or of language chiseling itself out of its o w n fleeting circumstances into a monument of form, as in G o r o s t i z a and G i r o n d o , or that of a continued and unending verticality, as in Juárroz, these projects of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry belie its manner not only of understanding and translating modernity, but also of c o m i n g to terms with a pivotal change that takes place in poetry itself and of w h i c h poetry gives an account. T o assume the problem of poetry in a critical manner is to question the very status of the genre and the possibilities of language. T h e desire of the poets to reformulate the category of poetry itself by defying that w h i c h makes language poetic may be seen as another critical operation within language, as part of an inquiry into w h a t makes the p o e m into a p o e m . Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry since the A v a n t - G a r d e defines poetry as some thing more than a particular rhetoric, but this something more is to be found by stripping that superficial rhetoric and discovering that the poet is not the center of the universe, but another link in a system of relationships that is s h o w n by the permutations of the poetic text. T h e s e written w o r d s , on the page, acquire not only a concreteness as w o r d s , but a kind of factualness as objects. Poems have become talismans because this is w h a t they had been, before they were p o e m s . T h e w o r k of O c t a v i o Paz illustrates the "talismanic"aspect of contemporary poetry. H o w e v e r , where this aspect can be seen with particular force is in the w o r k of Alejandra Pizarnik (Argentina, 1 9 3 6 - 1 9 7 2 ) , a poet w h o truly represents the end of a mode of writing in Spanish A m e r i c a , and the beginning of another, still undefined, w a y of defining poetry. Pizarnik's suicide in 1972, at the age of thirty-three, is actually the beginning of a 362 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Spanish American poetry: 1022-1975 w o r k that is still fundamentally unread, or at least read in reverse. Pizarnik's suicide is a figure in the carpet, it shapes and influences any reading that is done of her poetry. It forces critics to read her poetry starting from her death. Y e t it w a s not so much death that Pizarnik a l w a y s reached for and pursued, but necessity, w h i c h entails a different notion of the poetic text. Pizarnik assumed poetry as an act, and w o r d s as fully concrete elements that exist. In " F r a g m e n t o s , " from El infierno musical [The Musical Hell], completed months before her death, Pizarnik says: N o tengas miedo del lobo gris. Y o lo nombré para comprobar que existe y porque hay una voluptuosidad inadjetivable en el hecho de comprobar. (El deseo de la palabra, z6) [Do not be afraid of the gray wolf. I named him in order to assert that he exists and because there is an unadjectivable voluptuosity in the fact of asserting.] Pizarnik's p o e m s assert that all N a t u r e in them is completely language. Even where language is not, the reader is made to think that these spaces need to be, or will be at some point, filled w i t h w o r d s . B e y o n d the particular personal circumstance, Pizarnik forces us to fill her death w i t h the necessary language that explains her silence and that, in a sense, forecloses the possibility of silence itself. Pizarnik's language resonates in p o e m s that forgo the traditional arrangement of verse forms. A disciple of R i m b a u d and Lautréamont, the tone of her poems manages to produce an uncanny resemblance to a colloquial speech that nevertheless points to its o w n literariness. Pizarnik arrives at a purposely neutral style, w h e r e her prose fragments on the page underscore the desire for action more than the desire for expression. In Extraction de la piedra de la locura [Extraction of the Stone of Folly], her sentences break logical connections from one to the other. In Los trabajos y las noches [Works and Nights], her short texts, some w i t h o u t punctuation, are instances of time that are configured on the page. O n e could say that a n e w Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry starts w i t h these w o r d s from " L a palabra del d e s e o , " a p o e m out of El infierno musical: ¿Qué estoy diciendo? Está oscuro y quiero entrar. N o sé qué más decir (Yo no quiero decir, yo quiero entrar). El dolor de los huesos, el lenguaje roto a palabras, poco a poco reconstruir el diagrama de la irrealidad. (El deseo de la palabra, 18) [What am I saying? It is dark and I want to go in. I don't know what else to say (I don't want to say, I want to go in). T h e pain in the bones, language broken to words, step by step to reconstruct the diagram of unreality.] 363



Pizarnik's questions a l w a y s c o m e w i t h dark and elliptical answers that p r o v o k e more questions of their o w n . T h e r e is no place for this poet except the space of the page, where a series of voices speak directly to the readers of this poetic act. T h e y are short and sudden illuminations, sometimes in an ironic mode, where there is a l w a y s some process of reconstruction taking place. Pizarnik refuses to accept the futility of language. Her poetry is underscored by an act of faith in writing as able to decipher and give an account of a powerful sense of unreality. T h e writing of culture and of poetry is apprehended as an object, a verbal construction of w h a t will be written, of w h a t there is a necessity to write. T h i s necessity is w h e r e Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry of the following period begins.

364


[ II ]

The modern essay in Spanish America José Miguel

Oviedo

T h e contemporary Spanish A m e r i c a n essay is born simultaneously w i t h the twentieth century in 1900, the year in w h i c h José Enrique R o d o (1871— 1917) publishes Ariel [Ariel] in M o n t e v i d e o . N e a r l y a century later, it is a b o o k that continues to be read w i t h interest and even debated w i t h passion. W h i l e much of w h a t w a s once at stake in Ariel is largely outdated, R o d ó ' s essay has not lost a certain brand of intellectual mundonovista charm w h i c h still touches something deep within the Spanish A m e r i c a n spirit. Before establishing w h a t is today at issue in Ariel, it is necessary to situate it within its historical context. W h e n Ariel appeared in 1900, the modernista w a v e that swept A m e r i c a and even extended to Spain w a s at its apogee. After publishing Prosas profanas (1896), a founding text of the modernista aesthetic, R u b e n D a r i o travelled to Spain in 1899 and to Paris the f o l l o w i n g year. It w a s a m o m e n t of apotheosis for the great poet w h o s e revolutionary writing w a s already a p h e n o m e n o n internationally k n o w n and revered. Ariel w a s at once a reflection and an exaltation of this spiritual climate, as evidenced by its florid, précieux language and its gallicized Hellenism, not at all different from that cultivated by D a r i o . Y e t w h a t is striking is that R o d o w a s a m o n g the first harsh critics of Modernismo and specifically of D a r i o , in w h o m he recognized a superior artistic sensibility but w h o m he nonethe less eschewed for remaining aloof to the profound intellectual questions of the day. R o d ó ' s 1899 criticism of D a r i o is perhaps best characterized by its famous accusatory declaration: " H e [Dario] is not the poet of A m e r i c a " ( R o d o , Obras complétas, 169). T h e fact that D a r i o himself published this critical text as an unsigned prologue to his second, expanded edition of Prosas profanas (1901), thereby obliquely validating R o d ó ' s talent while mitigating the force of his critique, is in itself revealing: the poet realized that the U r u g u a y a n essayist w a s one of the " n e w spirits" a w a k e n e d by the modernista call. 365



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In point of fact, the crux of this opposition is rooted in the aesthetic line that separates t w o distinct facets of Modernismo: on the one hand, a decadent Modernismo that tended to shy a w a y from Americanist themes, and on the other, an affirmative A m e r i c a n i s m or Mundonovismo founded on the n e w continental conscience. It is tempting to say that R o d o discovered this second phase before D a r i o - thereby contributing to the dramatic changes evident in D a r i o ' s next b o o k of poetry, Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905) - and that this early discovery is perhaps one of his most significant merits as well as the primary reason for the sweeping and immediate iinpact of Ariel in the continent. M o r e o v e r , there were propitious historical reasons for the b o o k ' s influence: the Spanish A m e r i can w a r over C u b a , Puerto R i c o , and the Philippines (1898) represented a m o m e n t of crisis for Latin A m e r i c a and for Spain (the w e l l - k n o w n "Spanish d e c a d e n c e " w h i c h w o u l d be laid bare by the Generation of '98), and marked the beginning of US expansionism in Spanish A m e r i c a as foreseen by José M a r t i . T h e consequences of this w a r and the threats it represented for Spanish A m e r i c a embittered D a r i o himself, thereby prompting his return to Hispanic culture, a culture w h i c h he had previously renounced as dry and academic. H o w e v e r , it w a s R o d o w h o detected with greater precision - and even poignancy - the change in the environment; he examined this change w i t h a holistic intention and alerted the Spanish A m e r i c a n consciousness to it w i t h a tone of alarm and sincere concern. In so doing, he prolonged and renewed the great Americanist polemic, that had been so widely debated by the major essayists of the nineteenth century: Andrés Bello, D o m i n g o Faustino Sarmiento, M a r t i , and Eugenio M a r i a de H o s t o s . Ariel is a b o o k that should have been read - and indeed w a s - first, as a manifesto, and later, in the t w o decades that followed its publication, as a gospel for action. T h e text overcomes its generic bounds; it stands out as an expression of a state of mind perfectly synchronized between its author and its projected reader, both of w h o m had been sensitized by the questions and ideas propagated by Modernismo. T h e m o m e n t w a s ripe for Ariel; hence its enormous influence and appeal. R o d ó ' s text is not a treatise or essay w i t h the breadth or complexity of those by Sarmiento or H o s t o s . It is, rather, a surprisingly brief tract of less than 100 pages, didactic in form, straightforward, and quietly polemical. T o better understand it, w e should remember its origins: in 1897 R o d o had begun to compile his brief essays and critical texts in a series headed by the title La vida nueva. T h e first series included a short piece " E l que v e n d r a , " w h i c h can be read as a préfiguration of Ariel; the essay speaks of the urgent need for a teacher/master figure - the maestro - a spiritual guide to preside over the youth of the day and direct them a w a y from the false lures of decadent Modernismo. T h e series reveals the didactic bent of R o d ó ' s purpose and 366


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his perception that there w a s a very real void to be filled. T h e second series (1899) included the critical essay against D a r i o , while the third series of 1900 contained Ariel. T h e text is inscribed within a broader pedagogical effort; it is, in essence a professorial lesson about Americanism, about the origins, reality, and destiny of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture faced by its European heritage and by N o r t h A m e r i c a n hemispheric hegemony. Because Ariel's target audience w a s the youth of Spanish A m e r i c a , R o d o resorts to an allegoric strategy c o m m o n l y used in classical oratory. A n old and respected teacher, Prospero, bids farewell to his students w h o have gathered for their last meeting in his comfortable book-lined study, beneath the protective shade of the bronze statue of Ariel. Ariel is the w i n g e d spirit w h o symbolizes freedom and all that is morally elevated and aesthetically pure; his dark counterpart is C a l i b a n , the embodiment of all selfish and materialist human impulses. R o d o ' s symbolic f i g u r e s - P r o s p e r o , Ariel, and C a l i b a n are clear b o r r o w i n g s from Shakespeare's The Tempest, but the Shakespearean allusions, although meant to be prestigious, are rather remote ones. Instead, Ariel seems to be a response to (or a variant of) the drama by Ernest Renan (1823-1892) entitled Caliban, suite de La Tempête (1878) [Caliban: A Philosophical Drama continuing The Tempest" of William Shakespeare], the very title of w h i c h already underscores its intertextual connections. R e n a n had proposed a victory by C a l i b a n ; R o d o corrects R e n a n ' s conclusions, heralding instead Ariel's triumph. (The intellectual b a c k d r o p of this textual dialogue is further complicated by another French thinker - and another of R o d ô ' s intellectual heroes - Alfred Fouillé [ 1 8 3 2 - 1 9 1 2 ] , w h o had already criticized R e n a n in L'idée moderne du droit, also published in 1878. W h a t all this proves is that Ariel w a s already a central figure in the ideological debate of the day into w h i c h R o d o inscribes himself.) ({

T h e main body of R o d ô ' s essay is subdivided into six chapters (eight according to some editions w h i c h include the brief introduction and epilogue as parts of the text). Within the space of the first four chapters, R o d o c o m m e n d s to the continent's y o u t h the defense of the free spirit (1), condemns the modern tendency t o w a r d specialization w h i c h destroys the integrity and harmony of the spirit (2), underscores the moral function of beauty (3), and criticizes the utilitarian conception of life (4). H o w e v e r , it is the fifth chapter that is the core of its polemic thought and the source of the greatest misunderstanding of R o d o ' s w o r d s : therein appears the characterization of the United States as a great democratic society, filled with energy and devoted to a strong w o r k ethic, but devoured by the narrowness of a utilitarian spirit and by an exercise of freedom that tends t o w a r d homogeneity and denies in its w a k e the best values associated with individuality. R o d o contrasts this social model to that forged by a Latin 367 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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and Christian A m e r i c a , heir to Hellenic grace and to an uncompromising practice of art; that selfsame society w h i c h , under the deceptive spell of the N o r t h A m e r i c a n mirage, is in danger of forgetting " a sacred link w h i c h unites us to the immortal pages of history, trusting to our honor its continuation in the future" ( R o d o , Ariel, 72). T h e ambivalence of R o d o ' s feelings t o w a r d s the United States ("aunque no les a m o , les a d m i r o , " p. 76) confused most of his early readers (as well as many of his later ones), leading them to a facile inference not explicitly made by R o d o : namely, that if the symbol of Spanish A m e r i c a is Ariel, then that of the United States must be C a l i b a n . Such a reading dismisses (or simply ignores) R o d o ' s hopeful o u t l o o k for the inevitable role of the United States as a (perhaps unknowing) contributor to the cause of Ariel: " L a obra del positivismo norteamericano servira a la causa de Ariel, en ultimo t e r m i n o " (p. 89). It may be said that Ariel's readers and the historical circumstances at the start of the century assigned the text a semantic and ideological " m e s s a g e " that w e n t far beyond that intended by its author, thereby justifying s o m e h o w the legendary aura that still surrounds the essay. T h e seductive, though simplistic, image that w a s most broadly extracted from Ariel w a s this dualism of human societies w h o s e spiritual heritage links them to either C a i n or A b e l . T h e consequences that ensued from this image were no less appealing to a vast majority of readers. T h e antagonistic A r i e l - C a l i b a n couple is, to a degree, a refiguration of the civilization-barbarism dichotomy already inscribed in Sarmiento's Facundo (1845). For R o d o , the ideals of beauty and freedom w h i c h America should represent were inextricably associated with Hellenic culture and, as a result, w i t h Europe; w h a t distinguishes his C a l i b a n from Sarmiento's F a c u n d o is that Ariel's dark counterpart seems to have been extrapolated from his neighbor to the north and not from the g a u c h o of the south. (It is important to note that " C a l i b a n " is an anagram of " c a n i b a l , " Spanish for " c a n n i b a l " ; the name may also be derived from the w o r d " c a r i b e , " meaning native to C a r i b b e a n cultures, wherein the most terrible form of barbarity - cannibalism - w a s practiced to the shock of the European colonizer.) Ariel offers an answer to the horror produced by this savage image of A m e r i c a , implicit in Shakespeare and Renan. Other responses w o u l d follow thirty years after Ariel, in the form of parodies by the Brazilian avant-garde Antropofagia movement. Despite the foregoing, it is evident that the image R o d o had of Spanish A m e r i c a w a s decidedly European; his text envisions a pure and pristine Spanish A m e r i c a , purged of all its internal contradictions: not a reality, but a moral and aesthetic figuration of a collective entity. T h e idealism of Ariel is incontrovertible: the text offers an intense intellectual perception but also a faith - the faith of an optimist w h o believed in a future ruled by 368 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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the guiding principles of g o o d , art, harmony, and justice. R o d o ' s idealism w a s not w i t h o u t motivation; it w a s a s y m p t o m of the failure of nine teenth-century Positivism and its blind adherence to science and pragma tism. T h e positivist model - the dominating philosophical, scientific, and political force of the nineteenth century in Spanish A m e r i c a - is precisely w h a t the modernista credo meant to dismantle. T h e Spanish A m e r i c a n bourgeoisie had undoubtedly g r o w n and progressed under its auspices, but this had not made the y o u n g republics more just: a liberal economic scheme had paradoxically given rise to a conservative and retrograde military caudillismo. W h i l e keeping pace with the industrial revolution, societies had achieved material modernization, but were still eluded by the brand of refined modernity that D a r i o and his followers longed for. Ariel expressed this crisis and, moreover, offered a possible solution. T h e r e w a s a certain urgency in it, because the repositioning of political forces at the end of the century put a new threat before Spanish A m e r i c a : the United States. F r o m the historical vantage point of the present, it may be said today that in his criticism of N o r t h A m e r i c a and in his vision of the dilemma that it represented for the rest of the continent, R o d o at once surpasses and falls short of his o w n agenda. T h e t w o A m e r i c a s are, in effect, t w o distinct realities (and Ariel did well in pointing this out), but not exactly for the reasons proposed by R o d o . It is not the case, for example, that the "principle of disinterest" that is mentioned so frequently in the text is less present in the N o r t h than in the South: the ambition for p o w e r is a c o m m o n trait of mankind and there is no modern culture that can declare itself free from it. Furthermore, R o d o ' s " h e r o i c " concept of history is an overly mechanical construction that oversimplifies the N o r t h A m e r i c a n formative process as much as it does the Spanish A m e r i c a n one. T h i s principle blinds R o d o to w h a t w a s perhaps the essential problem of the United States: a lack of its o w n historical sense — an absence of critical consequences in the global political arena. In reality, it may be said that the major problem of the b o o k is its digressive and abstracting tendency, omitting almost all reference to sociological, economic, or political concrete realities. T h e r e is no mention whatsoever of some of the most pressing internal questions of the time for Spanish A m e r i c a , such as the status of the native Indian w h i c h had already attracted the attention of M a n u e l G o n z a l e z Prada (1844-1918), a m o n g others. W r a p p e d in the wings of Ariel, R o d o glides over a vast p a n o r a m a w h i c h he observes from a distance, seemingly not weighed d o w n by the onus of detail. W h a t R o d o provides is not so much a representation of the true being of A m e r i c a as it is a moral idea of it: a kind of Kantian imperative setting forth w h a t A m e r i c a ' s collective spirit should be, not w h a t it w a s . T h e essay is an exquisite manifestation of the philosophical individualism that w a s 369 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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adopted at the end of the nineteenth century as a result of the positivist crisis and the advent of Modernismo. A l t h o u g h o f different scope and intention, R o d ó ' s publications follow ing Ariel generally prolonged the visionary attitude inscribed in the earlier text. Motivos de Proteo (1909) reaffirms R o d ó ' s profound Hellenic spiritualism and his s o m e w h a t naive certainty that social transformation is the direct result of the human will. Perhaps better than Ariel, this b o o k demonstrates R o d ó ' s philosophical capacity: his g o a l w a s to develop a psychologic-ethical doctrine that, while clearly based on Bergsonian idealism, w o u l d nonetheless reflect a personal vision. T h e doctrine approaches modern thought inasmuch as R o d ó conceived it as a sum of fragments, deliberately denying the w o r k a closed form so the text could freely unfold itself in a constant state of " b e c o m i n g " (Ariel-Motivos de proteo, 59). Even R o d ó ' s prose style has managed to free itself from the heavy-handed oratorical tone of the earlier b o o k ; his prose here is tighter, less o v e r w r o u g h t . T h e r e is an alternation of lyric and reflexive passages, of a purely philosophical discourse w i t h the usual illustrative parables. Despite this, the b o o k remained relatively u n k n o w n at that time, perhaps because it w a s not fully understood by those w h o had previously read and been m o v e d by Ariel; the concerns of the illustrated social sectors seemed to be m o v i n g in another direction. R o d ó ' s El mirador de Próspero (1913) is a vast collection of articles and previously dispersed pieces w h i c h , from its very title, underscores R o d ó ' s insistence on the figure of the teacher as the guiding thread to organize his thoughts. T h i s didactic intention also affects R o d ó ' s style, w h i c h is undoubtedly more outdated for the modern reader than the contents of his w o r k . P o m p o u s , rhetorical, and digressive, Ariel's language suffers from an archaic affectation, more suitable for oratory than for written prose. His is a language that does not w a n t to be read but rather heard: the essay is fundamentally a speech, a civic oration. It is almost surprising to realize R o d ó ' s age w h e n he writes Ariel; only twenty-nine years old, he adopted the tone and demeanor of a wise, old professor to convey his message to the y o u t h of his o w n generation. R o d ó loved to m a k e use of the allegorical devices of classical philosophy, further evidenced by his use of fables (such as the one about the Oriental king introduced at the end of Part 11 of Ariel.) By virtue of his cultural b a c k g r o u n d and his spiritualist vocation, R o d ó embodies the dominating attitude of the U r u g u a y a n generation w h i c h in 1903 w o u l d m a k e possible the rise to p o w e r of José Batlle y O r d o n e z (1856-1929). R o d ó ' s liberalism seemed to materialize itself in Batlle's, w h o built an authentically benevolent and provident state in Uruguay, transforming his country into the so-called " S w i t z e r l a n d of A m e r i c a . " T h e message of Ariel and its unifying vision of culture are not far removed from the image 370 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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after w h i c h Uruguay and, more broadly, the entire R í o de la Plata region molded itself: a largely w h i t e , Europeanized, and illustrated collectivity that did not share the same problems that plagued other areas of Spanish A m e r i c a . R o d ó remained alien to these problems because they did not figure within his realm of experience. It is Ariel's affirmative strength and its faith in the goodness of the Americanist cause w h i c h perhaps best explains the b o o k ' s enormous reach beyond its historical moment. In fact, Ariel's influence w a s so profound that it gave rise to a w h o l e m o v e m e n t of Americanist ideas, propagated under the catch-all name of Arielismo [Arielism]. T h i s m o v e m e n t marked the end of the positivist hegemony in Spanish A m e r i c a and although the g r o u p is n o w all but forgotten, it exerted considerable influence in its time. Arielismo is far from being a school or even a precise form of Americanist thought; its chronological boundaries are as vague as its ideological ones. In varying degrees, Arielist thinkers shared w i t h their mentor a Gallic sensibility, a formal orientation t o w a r d the précieux, and cautionary criticism of A n g l o - S a x o n A m e r i c a . Manifest in Arielismo but not in Ariel were a pronounced interest in evolutionary theory (which served as a means to address the question of racial diversity) and a markedly conservative and sometimes even reactionary tone. T h e movement's eventual fascination w i t h local dictatorships and nascent European Fascism w o u l d undoub tedly have horrified R o d ó . T h e greatest aesthete of the Arielist group w a s the Venezuelan essayist M a n u e l D i a z R o d r i g u e z (1868-1927) w h o introduced the decadent tone to Venezuelan literature. D í a z R o d r i g u e z is the author of, a m o n g other b o o k s , Camino de perfection (1908), an elegant collection of essays a m o n g w h i c h figures an interesting critical portrait of Modernismo. A peculiar case is that of the Peruvian Francisco G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n ( 1 8 8 3 1953). His prolonged residence in France made of him a bilingual writer as well as an a v o w e d Francophile. Influenced by the organicist thought of Gustave Le B o n and Bergsonian idealism, G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n devoted various b o o k s to the issue of Spanish A m e r i c a confronted by Europe and the United States. His t w o most important w o r k s on the subject are Les démocraties latines de VAmérique (written in French, published in Paris in 1 9 1 2 , and finally translated to Spanish in 1979) and La creation de un continente (1913). A n o t h e r Peruvian essayist, José de la R i v a - A g ü e r o (1885-1944) deserves mention as the founder of modern literary and historiographie studies in Peru. H e is the author of Carácter de la literatura del Perú independiente (1905) and La historia en el Perú (1910) - important b o o k s in their respective fields, the first has the added merit of having been a university thesis, written by R i v a - A g ü e r o at the age of nineteen. Both are w o r k s of profound erudition and personal reflection as well as examples 371 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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of a polished and precisely w o r k e d prose style. Paisajes peruanos (1955) is a later text w h i c h captures in brilliant images the author's memories of a trip thoughout the interior of Peru. T h e p r o u d Hispanicism and unyield ing defense of Catholicism that characterized R i v a - A g ü e r o from early on led him to an acceptance of reactionary positions and, eventually, to the exaltation of Italian Fascism. It is ironic that in his o w n country R i v a A g ü e r o w a s considered the visible leader of local Arielism, given that he reproached R o d ó for applying Hellenism to a continent w h i c h he v i e w e d as irrevocably contaminated by the negative influence of Indians, mesti zos, and Blacks. T h e sad truth is that during this period various important figures of Spanish A m e r i c a n thought succumbed to the same pitfalls and to even greater errors. T h e Argentinian C a r l o s O c t a v i o Bunge (1875-1918) published in 1903, w h e n the echoes of Ariel still resounded loudly, a disconcerting b o o k , Nuestra América (1903). T h e title's echoing to M a r t i ' s is completely misleading; Bunge w a s another follower of Le B o n ' s theories concerning the influence of racial characteristics in the social p h y s i o g n o m y of a people. His vision of A m e r i c a could not have been any more negative. In sharp contrast to R o d ó , Bunge adhered to the principles of scientific determinism and supported a mechanical application of the D a r w i n i a n theory of evolution to sociological studies. His rhetoric included, therefore, such terms as superior races, subraces, l a w s of supremacy, and the like. W h i l e Blacks and Indians are presented as socially retrograde beings, incapable of significant intellectual or artistic activity, the mestizo is portrayed as the product of a racial mixture w h i c h aggravates and degenerates the original typological traits. In Bunge's racist theories, there is even something of phrenology: he goes so far as to judge an individual's spiritual baseness according to his physical constitu tion. O n l y the white race, armed w i t h European and authentically Christian values, has any possibility of social progress, w h i c h he defines by proposing the United States, and M e x i c o under the dictatorship of Porfirio D i a z (1830-1915), as models. A l t h o u g h s o m e w h a t more moderate in his approach, the Argentinian essayist José Ingenieros (1877—1925) defended similar ideas in Sociología argentina (1910). Ingenieros w a s a disciple of evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and although he w a s also a believer in Socialism, he goes so far as to justify slavery as the juridical manifestation of a biological fact. A m o n g his many b o o k s devoted to philosophical, psychological, and social questions [Hacia una moral sin dogma [1917], Ensayos filosóficos [1917], Las fuerzas morales [1922]), El hombre mediocre (1913) w a s the most popular as well as the most influential. It w a s also the most Arielist of Ingenieros's b o o k s , as the Spencerian evolutionism that habitually informs his w o r k s is tempered by a brand of 372 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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social idealism. T h e essay condemns the conformity and docility of the socalled mediocre individual while it praises the innovative spirit of the superior man w h o strives for social change. A n o t h e r essayist w h o s e thought has connections w i t h the aforemen tioned is the Bolivian Alcides A r g u e d a s ( i 8 7 9 - 1 9 4 6 ) , also k n o w n as the author of various indigenist novels. His most w i d e l y read essay is Pueblo enfermo (1909), closely tied to his narrative w o r k . A r g u e d a s ' s thought is radical: an unfortunate combination of biological l a w s , historical factors, and environmental circumstances have made of the Indian race an atrophied and diseased one. Even w o r s e is the problem presented by the mestizo, or cholo, in w h o s e psyche the genetic faults of his various racial components are multiplied, rendering him incapable of using his o w n faculties to free himself from the conditioning that enslaves him. T h e r e is only one palliative in this disturbing p a n o r a m a of races condemned to an infrahuman fate: education w h i c h , although unable to transform these individuals into truly civilized h u m a n beings, is at least capable of converting them into useful ones - g o o d farmers, laborers, or soldiers. Just as G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n represents a perverse extension of the Arielista fascination w i t h Europe, the ideas of Bunge, Ingenieros, and A r g u e d a s can be read as a perversion of p r e - W o r l d W a r I Scientism; in order to explain the nature of a miscegenated A m e r i c a , all three fell, via different routes, into a deviated sociological determinism founded upon the racial issue. A healthy rejection of this n a r r o w and retrograde Scientism is that represented by the M e x i c a n thinker Justo Sierra (1848-1912), part of w h o s e w o r k corresponds, more properly, to the nineteenth century. A l t h o u g h marked by contradictions and ambivalence, Sierra is a capital figure of the modern spirit in his country: a liberal thinker born of an intellectual climate dominated by a conservative Positivism, Sierra served as cabinet member first under Porfirio D i a z and later under the regime of Francisco M a d e r o ( 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 1 3 ) , at the beginning of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u tion. A s a writer and artist, Sierra w a s a romantic, admirer of both D ' A n n u n z i o and Nietzsche, w h o s e influences are visible in his w o r k . His thought is closer to the humanism of M a r t i than to the scientists w i t h w h o m he w a s associated and although the historical circumstances under w h i c h he w r o t e were completely different from R o d ó ' s , he is a more authentic Arielista and has greater affinity w i t h the master than those w h o formally assumed that name. Essayist, orator, short-story writer and poet, Sierra w a s also a politician, historiographer, and, a b o v e all, an educator. In Mexico: su evolution social (1900-1902), Sierra offers the first analysis of the historical and political processes that operate in his country; Juárez, su obra y su tiempo (1905) is a brilliant study of the great M e x i c a n reformer. Sierra's modernity resides in his arduous defense of antidogmatism and tolerance in the m o v e m e n t of ideas. 373 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Perhaps it makes sense to close a period that opened w i t h R o d ó writing from the very height of Modernismo with t w o writers w h o e m b o d y other important phases of this aesthetic. T h e first occupies a place of honor in Argentinian literature as a poet, short-story writer, and philosophical and political thinker: L e o p o l d o L u g o n e s (1874-1938). A contradictory figure, w h o s e politics evolved from an early Socialism to the defense of an ultranationalist militarism, his essayistic w o r k reveals an encyclopedic voracity (that included Hellenism, theosophy, science, and history) as well as the g r o w i n g intellectual disorder and spiritual anguish that eventually led him to suicide. Lugones's historical essay El imperio jesuítico (1904), the fruit of a 1902 trip throughout Misiones accompanied by the great U r u g u a y a n short-story writer H o r a c i o Q u i r o g a , together w i t h El payador (1916), part of a vast, unfinished study of Martín Fierro, are his t w o greatest contributions to the genre. T h e y are intensely personal b o o k s , s o m e w h a t arbitrary and even of unequal quality; they are nonetheless a m o n g the finest examples of Lugones's prose - impassioned, baroque, and tightly structured. T h e other modernista writer to be discussed here is the Venezuelan Rufino B l a n c o F o m b o n a (1874—1944) w h o s e personality probably contributed at least as much to his fame as his writings. His reputation for indiscretions, sarcasm, and even slander transformed him into the enfant terrible of his time. Politics w a s one of Blanco F o m b o n a ' s great passions; it w a s also the primary cause for his long pilgrimage as an exile throughout Europe. H e w a s a fierce polemicist w h o s e formal elegance heightened the artfulness of attacks w h i c h were often directed against respected individuals and institutions. B l a n c o F o m b o n a w a s a controversial essayist w h o expressed himself in literary chronicles, and journalistic articles but, almost a l w a y s , in diatribes against one burning issue or another. T h e relation between Spain and Spanish A m e r i c a , the fervor for Bolivar, a fascination w i t h the Nietzschean Superman, anarchy, G r e e k idealism, and the theme of A n g l o - S a x o n imperialism are a m o n g the dominating questions in such b o o k s as La evolución social y política de Hispanoamérica ( 1 9 1 1 ) , La lámpara de Aladino (1915), and El conquistador español del siglo XVI (1921?). B l a n c o F o m b o n a also w r o t e El modernismo y los poetas modernistas (1929) and a diary provocatively entitled Camino de imperfección (1933). By the start of the second decade of the twentieth century, the p a n o r a m a of Spanish A m e r i c a n thought w a s progressing along three separate lines of development: first, the effort to explain and analyze the continent's sociopolitical crisis in light of M a r x i s t theory; second, the renovation of Americanist cultural issues c o m p o u n d e d by the Indian question, and finally, the appearance of the first mature attempt at pure philosophical



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reflection, focused upon the examination of the central problems of humanity. Diagnosis, A m e r i c a n i s m , and speculation are the forms w h i c h best define the essay of this period, a genre marked by the presence of a number of great figures w h o s e influence is still felt in t o d a y ' s intellectual debate. It can be said that these new contributions closed the idealist cycle of Arielismo, presenting a more c o m p l e x and more problematic v i e w of mankind's situation, both in a social and in a universal context. G r e a t historical events precipitated the radical change in the direction of Spanish A m e r i c a n thought after the century's first decade. It w a s a particularly dramatic period, marked by the rise of important revolution ary movements (the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n of 1910, the Soviet R e v o l u t i o n of 1 9 1 7 ) , the First W o r l d W a r , w o r k e r and student agitation in both Europe and A m e r i c a (for e x a m p l e , the movement for university reform in C o r d o b a , Argentina, w h i c h had repercussions throughout the entire continent), the intensification of N o r t h A m e r i c a n intervention, the forma tion of farmers' unions and the g r o w t h of labor organizations in various countries, the exacerbation of the old p h e n o m e n o n of military dictator ships, etc. A d d i n g to this w a s the powerful impact of artistic avant-garde movements (which in many instances joined forces w i t h politically radical groups) and the general climate of renovation and contradiction that they propagated throughout the w o r l d . T h i s n e w reality marked the opening of w h a t w e can refer to as contemporary thought. It is precisely at this chronological juncture that the great ideological debate w h i c h still unsettles us today formally began to take shape. T h e essays w h i c h characterize the beginning of this period are all recognizable by a tone that is somewhere between optimistic and exasperated, by an explicit degree of militant commitment to concrete causes, and by the rebelliousness and indignation of their discourse. Writers m o v e a w a y from digressions and a purely elegant rhetoric t o w a r d a confrontation with the concrete problems of the day filtered through personal experience: essayists perform " d i a g n o s e s , " " X - r a y s , " " e x a m s . " It is evident that the old brand of individualism is outdated: the essay turns instead t o w a r d the exterior, in search of the " o t h e r , " the u n k n o w n or the forgotten. T h e language of the period often sidesteps the private, inner realm of the individual in favor of theoretical considerations regarding social classes or economic structures. Submitted to a w i d e range of pressures, conditioning, and interests, man is perceived as the embodi ment of the values of the " m a s s " , the collectivity within w h i c h he lives. T h e question of the apprehension of reality became a philosophical, aesthetic, and moral problem of enormous proportions in a continent that, to a certain extent, remained u n k n o w n to itself. A n important figure in the development of twentieth century Spanish A m e r i c a n thought is José C a r l o s Mariátegui (1894-1930) w h o s e personal375 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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ity, w o r d s , and actions can be considered as being particularly representa tive of his time. Before M a r i á t e g u i , and indeed after him, few serious attempts were made in the application of M a r x i s m to the A m e r i c a n reality, w i t h t w o notable exceptions: Juan B . Justo (i865-1928), transla tor of Capital (1867-1885) and director of the socialist newspaper La Vanguardia, and M a n u e l Ugarte ( 1 8 7 5 - 1 9 5 1 ) , author of El destino de un continente (1923), w h o spread European socialist ideas and anti-imperial ist doctrine. A l t h o u g h A m e r i c a ' s political situation in the beginning of the twentieth century w o u l d seem to have been propitious to the development of M a r x i s t thought, its appearance in the continent is rather belated. Despite the efforts of Spanish A m e r i c a n M a r x i s t s to deny it, neither M a r x nor Engels had any significant interest in assimilating the Spanish A m e r i c a n case to the body of their historical doctrine; Engels w e n t so far as to rejoice over the territorial plundering that M e x i c o suffered at the hands of the United States in 1848 - the same year as the C o m m u n i s t Manifesto. In spite of its cultural antiquity, the A m e r i c a n continent appeared, even to its most radical figures, as an ahistoric reality — more undeveloped and barbaric even than czarist Russia. Nonetheless, the similarities between the t w o realities are obvious: Spanish A m e r i c a , like old Russia, w a s basically an agrarian society, populated by illiterate farmers w h o were subjected to a regime of feudal exploitation - a subculture at the service of an authoritarian elite. It is precisely the abuse of this subculture that Mariátegui w o u l d denounce. Afflicted by poverty and p o o r health since childhood, Mariátegui entered the literary arena in the s h a d o w s of a decadent Post-modernismo, fulfilling the duties of a s o m e w h a t frivolous chronicler. Soon thereafter, as early as 1916, his intellectual evolution already began to manifest signs of a deep social unrest, as evidenced by his founding of the newspaper La Razón, w h i c h w a s shut d o w n by the Peruvian authorities. In 1920, President A u g u s t o B. Leguia tried to rid himself of the y o u n g intellectual by sending him off to Europe. Mariátegui spent the next three years there (from 1920 to 1923), primarily in Italy; this w a s a fundamental period in his w o r k and in his formulation of an A m e r i c a n brand of M a r x i s m . U p o n returning to Peru, Mariátegui w a s a changed man: a doctrinaire M a r x i s t , militant and with a cause to defend. In the intense years that remained until his early death, and in spite of being confined to a wheelchair, Mariátegui founded and directed Amauta, (1926-1930) as well as Labor (1928-1929) - literary and ideological journals that were extraordinary in their time; he organized the Peruvian Socialist Party w h i c h w o u l d serve as the foundation of the Peruvian C o m m u n i s t Party; and he published La escena contemporánea (1925) and 7 ensayos de interpretation de la realidad peruana (1928) [Seven Interpre tative Essays on Peruvian Reality]. T h i s final collection of essays is 376 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Mariategui's masterpiece as well as a true milestone for M a r x i s t thought in the A m e r i c a n continent. M a r i a t e g u i ' s brand of M a r x i s m w a s directly shaped by his European experience and by his Italian readings. Italy w a s the ideal l o o k - o u t point for Mariategui to observe the p a n o r a m a of global politics, the conflicts of opposing ideologies, their implementation; and above all, to understand the problems of his o w n country while remaining outside provincial debates. It w a s the first time since G o n z a l e z Prada's indigenist preaching at the end of the previous century, that the problems of Spanish Americans were framed within the context of the struggles of the international proletariat; that is to say, as a specific case but responding to the historical laws c o m m o n to all oppressed peoples and classes. T h e national problem w a s seen, at last, as a chapter in the process of global capitalism. A t the beginning of 7 ensayos, Mariategui writes: " M y thoughts and my life are one, one single process. A n d if there is one merit with w h i c h I expect and claim to be credited, it is - in accordance with a Nietzschian principle that of putting all my b l o o d in my i d e a s " (Mariategui, 7 ensayos, 1 1 ) Mariategui's revolutionary voluntarism and his flexible, humanist con ception of M a r x i s m carry the traces of his Italian and French mentors, particularly of Benedetto C r o c e (in his M a r x i s t stage), G e o r g e Sorel, and A n t o n i o G r a m s c i . For these thinkers, M a r x i s m represented a new myth of humanity, capable of radically transforming Europe. Mariategui con ceived as the g o a l of his n e w p r o g r a m nothing short of the transformation of A m e r i c a , by means of the liberating forces of A n d e a n peasants in the Peruvian countryside and of worker-organized movements in the cities. Inasmuch as Mariategui w a s a true Indigenist, he nonetheless believed that " I n d o - A m e r i c a n salvation could not be effected w i t h o u t European science and t h o u g h t " (ibid. 12). Mariategui's cultural vision formed part of this liberating project. H e stands out a m o n g both his Spanish A m e r i c a n and European fellow M a r x i s t s for his comprehensive perception of the role of art in the revolutionary process. Far from being a fanatic cultural commissary, suspicious of the so-called " b o u r g e o i s f o r m s " of aesthetic creation, Mariategui w a s a sympathetic and enthusiastic promoter of the European and Spanish A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e , of Surrealism, and of the discoveries that p s y c h o l o g y and science contributed to the art of his times. Amauta served as an introductory vehicle to a broad variety of art forms, despite its doctrinaire statement of principles asserting the importance of ideo logically committed artistic expression: It is not necessary to declare explicitly that Amauta is not a tribune open to every fleeting idea. W e , the founders of this journal, do not adhere to an agnostic concept of culture and art. W e consider ourselves to be a fighting, polemic f o r c e . . . I am a man with an affiliation and a faith. I can


CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE say the same of this journal, that it rejects all that which is contrary to its own ideology as well as that which reveals no ideology at all. (Amauta, no. i , 1926, 1) In spite of its militant tone, the magazine w a s in fact a forum open to the most diverse writers, manifestations, and topics: José M a r i a Eguren's symbolist poetry, the baroque "anti-sonnets" of M a r t í n A d á n , the w o r k s of A n d r é Breton and F. T . Marinetti, M e x i c a n M u r a l i s m , the psychoana lytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Indigenism [Indigenismo], the ideas of José Ortega y Gasset, Louis A r a g ó n , Henri Barbusse. T h e r e w a s a reason for this apparent contradiction: Mariátegui believed that the A v a n t G a r d e corresponded to a phase of Western cosmopolitanism, w h i c h w o u l d gradually open the w a y to a superior stage of national affirmation expressed in a realist aesthetic. In this w a y , literary history too w a s ordered according to progressive ends. M a r i á t e g u i ' s interest in art and literature is enough to warrant his placement a m o n g the most valuable critics and theorists of his time. It is not coincidental that his examination of national literature appears as the final chapter of 7 ensayos, as a fitting culmination to the social and political issues discussed throughout the previous six essays: the Peruvian e c o n o m y , the Indian problem, the land situation, education, religion, and the debate of regionalism versus centralism. N o one before Mariátegui had ever submitted Spanish A m e r i c a n reality to the kind of multiple examination of 7 ensayos, much less w i t h the dedication and hopeful vision that inform his effort; the interpretation of reality w a s conceived as the first step t o w a r d action. Possibly the most broadly discussed of the seven essays w a s the one addressing the land problem; the text proposed an end to the latifundio system and to the feudal regime of agrarian exploitation. In his studies of the indigenous communities, Mariátegui discovered in the Q u e c h u a n ayllu the essential seeds of an "Incan c o m m u n i s m " ; the political utopia of Peru consisted, therefore, in a return to the past, modelled on the ancient T a h u a n t i n s u y o , and made current by the contributions of modern Socialism and M a r x i s t praxis. T h i s Utopian scenario envisioned by Mariátegui w a s interpreted as heresy b y the most recalcitrant factions of Spanish A m e r i c a n M a r x i s m and gave rise to a fervent international polemic. Y e t another polemic, concerning literary Indigenism, brought Mariátegui face to face w i t h Luis A l b e r t o Sánchez. Its polemical richness is precisely one of the greatest virtues of Mariátegui's b o o k : it served as a vigorous stimulus for political, econ omic, and cultural discussion, not strictly in nationalist terms, but also in light of the transformations that were redefining the rest of the w o r l d . Mariátegui inscribes contemporary Peruvian history into the impassioned 378



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drama that w a s being acted out on a global stage. His style contributes to the sense of historic urgency and inevitability of his p r o g r a m . M o r e o v e r , enough cannot be said of M a r i a t e g u i ' s exceptional talents as a journalist, or of his ability to process w h a t he saw and read, constantly enriching his perspective by assimilating n e w ideas. H e w a s not so much an organic thinker as a great interpreter, w h o came across as both sensible and refined. His prose, like that of the best journalism, is functional, clear, convincing, precise, and agile. It is impossible to read Mariategui w i t h indifference. M a r i a t e g u i ' s ability to convince and effectively w i n over his readers has contributed equally to his legendary status and to w h a t m a y be considered a p r o b l e m in the reception of his texts, namely the transformation of his thoughts into a massive and monolithic doctrine k n o w n by the name of Mariateguismo. It is ironic that the w o r k of a great master of intellectual debate has been transformed by some ideologists into an undebatable oracle. Sixty years after its publication, 7 ensayos reveals, like all historical texts, its strengths as well as its shortcomings. Mariategui incorporated Peru and Spanish A m e r i c a into the great current of critical thought that w o u l d give rise to contemporary political science. His interpretive scheme - M a r x i s t m e t h o d o l o g y - a l l o w e d him to see clearly w h a t others could not, but in some cases also led to sophisms and simplifications. For e x a m p l e , M a r i a t e g u i ' s defense of "Incan c o m m u n i s m " (developed in an extensive footnote to his essay on the Peruvian land situation and written as a response to El pueblo del sol [1925] by A u g u s t o Aguirre M o r a l e s [1891-1945]) includes a long digression addressing the problems of the lack of individual freedom and the authoritarianism of the Incan empire. His rejection of Aguirre M o r a l e s ' s thesis as purely idealist and his contention that "the man of T a h u a n t i n s u y o felt absolutely no need for individual f r e e d o m " is simply untenable. M a r i a t e g u i ' s faith in M a r x i s m as a messianic formula that w o u l d change the w o r l d for the better w a s almost religious in nature: it is w o r t h w h i l e to remember that as a youth he manifested certain mystical tendencies that were undoubtedly sublimated in adulthood. Mariategui did not tend t o w a r d a rigid conception of M a r x i s m as a science, but he did possess the ardor - and sometimes the blindness - of the providential leader. It is difficult to situate adequately the w o r k of the C o l o m b i a n Baldomero Sanin C a n o ( 1 8 6 1 - 1 9 5 7 ) ; it is no less difficult to find his peer, except perhaps in A l f o n s o Reyes (below) w h o m he calls to mind in his insatiable curiosity and encyclopedic k n o w l e d g e . First of all, it is necessary to establish that chronologically Sanin C a n o is much older than any of the other essayists analyzed in this section; he is in fact only eight years younger than José M a r t i and is six years older than R u b e n D a r i o . His 379 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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w o r k begins in the last decade of the nineteenth century and untiringly continues until the middle of the twentieth. A l t h o u g h he shares the general concerns that preoccupied the essayists of the first third of the twentieth century, the most significant aspects of his w o r k clearly diverge in another direction. W h a t is more: Sanín C a n o has met the curious destiny of becoming a prestigious and venerable " A m e r i c a n classic," yet is hardly read today outside his o w n country. Sanín C a n o stands out as a great thinker to be rediscovered, although he suffers the consequences of a dispersed b o d y of writing, at times inseparable from his journalistic w o r k . T h e r e is no centering nucleus to Sanín C a n o ' s w o r k ; it w a s animated, as if by a centrifugal force, by casual and a l w a y s free encounters w i t h various themes and authors. Sanín C a n o w a s full of ideas, but he lacked theories to defend (which did not preclude a genuine and mutual feeling of admiration between M a r i á t e g u i and him). D u r i n g the almost 100 years of his life, Sanín C a n o w o r k e d in politics (as a liberal) writing several b o o k s on the subject, held important official, diplomatic, and cultural positions, and w a s both a university professor and correspondent in M a d r i d and Buenos Aires. H o w e v e r , it is his thirteen-year residence in L o n d o n ( 1 9 0 9 1922) that most strongly marked his destiny as a writer, putting him in contact w i t h a cultural w o r l d that w o u l d have otherwise remained u n k n o w n to him and exposing him to the best of British essayistic and journalistic writing. T h e first important collection of Sanín C a n o ' s essays is La civilización manual y otros ensayos (1925). T h e title piece is an exquisite meditation on the importance of the hand in art and culture throughout history. O t h e r texts concerning Nietzsche, Shakespeare, and the E n g l i s h - A r g e n t i nian writer W i l l i a m Henry H u d s o n attest to the breadth of his interests. A review of his other collections of essays - Indagaciones e imágenes (1926), Crítica y arte (1932), El humanismo y el progreso del hombre (1955) confirm his fine-tuned critical perception for discerning the most valuable w o r k of w o r l d literature in order to present it to the Spanish A m e r i c a n reading public: Marinetti, G e o r g e Bernard S h a w , A l d o u s H u x l e y , Eugene O ' N e i l l , G i o s u é G a r d u c c i , John Ruskin, Cyril C o n n o l l y , Christopher Isherwood, Evelyn W a u g h , and so many others. His attention to foreign literatures did not imply a d i s a v o w a l of the literature of his o w n country, as exemplified by Letras colombianas (1944), or, m u c h less, of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. It is evident by his tastes, his tone, and his intellectual discretion, that Sanín C a n o more closely approaches contemporary sensibilities than many essayists of his time. A n admirable note in his writing is the total lack of pretension w i t h w h i c h he practiced literary criticism; he believed that " T h e r e is no such thing as absolute truth for the critic, w h o s e role is to comprehend and, only in a case of arrogance, to e x p l a i n " (Ensayos, 103). Sanín C a n o w a s a master of the short essay as 380 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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well as a master of prose, w h i c h he managed w i t h elegance, precision, and plasticity. T h e r e is a direct line, not well observed, connecting Sanín C a n o to Reyes, to Jorge Luis Borges (p. 393) to the youngest essayists of today. In a society like that of C o l o m b i a , w h i c h w a s culturally turned upon itself, Sanín C a n o ' s role w a s vital: he opened w i n d o w s that a l l o w e d a view of w o r l d culture and, moreover, he made this culture circulate for the education and enjoyment of others. T h e r e is an entire group of important M e x i c a n thinkers w h o s e ideological cradle w a s the famous A t e n e o de la Juventud (1909-1914), w h i c h contributed decisively to M e x i c o ' s twentieth-century intellectual history. In the five-year period from the outbreak of the R e v o l u t i o n to the start of the First W o r l d W a r , the A t e n e o shaped the intellectual development of José V a s c o n c e l o s (1882-1959), A n t o n i o C a s o (1883-1946), A l f o n s o Reyes (1889-1959), and the D o m i n i c a n Pedro Hénriquez Ureña (1884-1946), w h o s e collective w o r k is fertile in the fields of philosophy, Americanist thought, and literary and aesthetic criticism. T h e group represents, in general, another manifestation of the humanist reaction against Positivism [Positivismo] that elsewhere marked the beginning of the century. T h e most c o m p l e x and polemic of the group is V a s c o n c e l o s . H e served the revolutionary cause from early on, but later, disgusted by the violence inherent in the R e v o l u t i o n and defeated as a presidential candidate in a fraudulent election (1929), he w e n t on to defend reactionary positions. T h r o u g h o u t various exiles, V a s c o n c e l o s came to k n o w Europe and the United States, an experience w h i c h gave him a peculiar perspective of M e x i c a n history. H e w a s a sensualist visionary w h o attempted a fusion of Western thought w i t h H i n d u mysticism. V a s c o n c e l o s had a Utopian, optimistic, and aesthetic conception of A m e r i c a n reality, w h i c h he imagined as a culture on the march t o w a r d a state of greater happiness and of heroic dimensions. His readings of Bergson, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche reflect his vision of a cosmic race, a miscegenation in a continental melting pot, w h i c h w o u l d e m b o d y the best of all humanity. In Vasconcelos's philosophic vocabulary, w o r d s such as "mística l i m p i a " ["clean m y s t i c i s m " ] , " v a g a impulsión de tránsito" ["vague impulsion of transit"], " c o n s u m a c i ó n en lo a b s o l u t o " ["consummation in the absolu t e " ] , appear w i t h relative frequency as key moments of a universal epiphany that gives sense to human existence. Vasconcelos's ideas on race and A m e r i c a n reality are perhaps most thoroughly developed in La raza cósmica (1925) and Indoiogía (1926), a mixture of essays and chronicles that renews the topic of Indigenism and gives it a continental projection. T h i s continental projection is nonetheless diffused by a tendency to fantasize w i t h grandiose or chimeric images, such as those alluding to Atlantis. V a s c o n c e l o s ' s extensive autobiogra-



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phy, beginning w i t h Ulises criollo (1935) and continuing with La tormenta (1936), El desastre (1938), and El proconsulado (1939), is filled w i t h valuable pages of historic and philosophic reflection. Furthermore, Vasconcelos's personal w o r k w a s complemented by his position as Secreatry of Education ( 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 4 ) , an appointment of decisive import ance for the cultural and artistic life of his country. C u r i o u s l y , the optimistic philosopher gave w a y , especially t o w a r d the end of his life, to a writer dominated by rancor and bitterness. His prose, on the w h o l e digressive and rhapsodic, is highlighted, at times, by lyric raptures and pathetic confessions. A n t o n i o C a s o w a s an accomplished philosopher w h o s e w o r k raises probing questions that are at once permanent and current. His relation w i t h V a s c o n c e l o s is particularly interesting; although C a s o w a s deeply influenced by him, especially at the beginning of his philosophic career, he contradicts and even surpasses his forebear in many respects. L i k e V a s c o n c e l o s , C a s o utilizes Bergson's ideas on intuition as a foundation, but he submits these to a more organic form of analysis, particularly in La filosofía de la intuición (1914). C a s o opposes V a s c o n c e l o s ' s brand of vague idealism w i t h a theory that synthesizes the religious w i t h the speculative. In point of fact, w h a t C a s o posits is a philosophy to restore the authentically human character of life. C a s o ' s most important w o r k is La existencia como economía, como desinterés y como caridad (1919); the title requires an explanation. " E c o n o m y " refers to an elemental grade of human life, dominated by immediate interest, efficacy, and the use of the least a m o u n t of effort to achieve the greatest benefit. "Disinterest" is a conception of life as a freely assumed sacrifice, w h o s e limitations may be surpassed through the medium of art and the superior expressions of the spirit. " C h a r i t y " is an elevated moral concept of existence, inasmuch as it is governed by principles of love and goodness, and divorced from any kind of biological determinism. In m u c h the same w a y that C a s o discusses Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's ideas concerning the will and transforms them into an original brand of thought, he likewise spans a bridge that will serve as a point of encounter between Bergsonian Vitalism and the p h e n o m e n o l o g y of E d m u n d Husserl, w h o s e w o r k he is a m o n g the first in A m e r i c a to discover. C a s o ' s 1922 Discursos a la nación mexicana proves, together w i t h several other b o o k s published in those years, h o w intuitive philosophy w a s being applied to a c o m m o n preoccupation of C a s o and thinkers of his generation, namely, the recuperation of the roots of " M e x i c a n i s m " at a critical moment in M e x i c a n history marked by a reactivation of the past and a simultaneous conjuring of strengths w i t h the promise of national rebirth. T h e most important essayist of the g r o u p - and indeed one of the greatest essayists ever to be born in A m e r i c a - is, w i t h o u t a doubt, A l f o n s o 382



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Reyes. W i t h Reyes, the genre is transformed into an elevated aesthetic manifestation, a marriage of the highest form of art and the most rigorous k n o w l e d g e . His entire w o r k - consisting of more than twenty massive volumes - could be summarized in the double sense of the w o r d " g r a c e " : on the one hand, an exceptional gift and on the other, an elegant, cordial style that extends to even the most profound subjects. In fact, one of his w o r k s is entitled Simpatías y diferencias ( i 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 6 ) , w h i c h w o u l d seem to point to t w o essential functions of the critic: to d r a w differences from a m o n g similarities and to d o so w i t h o u t pedantry or contrivance, Reyes w a s a p o l y g l o t , a true man of genius, a humanist c o m p a r a b l e to the greatest of the Renaissance; someone w h o w a s interested in everything and w h o w a s able to talk about it w i t h an inimitable personal touch. M i g u e l de U n a m u n o observed: " A l f o n s o R e y e s ' intelligence is a function of his g o o d n e s s " (cited by P. Earle and R. M e a d , Historia del ensayo hispanoamericano 103). L i k e the Renaissance humanists, he w a s an admirer of Classical antiquity, w h i c h he conceived of not as something distant or exotic, but rather as an immediate e x a m p l e for Spanish Americans to follow if they w a n t e d to remain true to themselves. T o define its essence, Spanish A m e r i c a should not renounce its universal heritage, but rather appropriate it and claim it for its o w n , as has in fact occurred at the greatest moments of h u m a n history. T h e title o f one of his poetry b o o k s says it all: Homero en Cuernavaca (1949); it asserts the bond whereby a M e x i c a n could talk with H o m e r as if he were just another national poet. In order to fully appreciate the significance of R e y e s ' s w o r k , it is necessary to recall that during the time in w h i c h he lived, M e x i c o w a s undergoing a stage of feverish nationalist affirmation that tended t o w a r d an exaltation of the telluric and of autochthonous cultural roots, Reyes embodied a secret dilemma between a hedonist personality, devoted to the pure delight of the spirit, and another more austere persona, reclaimed by the exigencies of history and the commitment to those moral questions that were urgent for a M e x i c a n of the first third of the century. R e y e s resolved the conflict w i t h characteristic equilibrium: both the seduction o f pleasure and the immersion in collective movements, discrete seclusion and active participation were, for him, attitudes that enriched and enlightened h u m a n nature. M o r e o v e r , the w a y of achieving harmony between these t w o realms w a s through the practice of art, of thought, and of study, each of w h i c h constitutes a generous form of giving oneself to the private and the public simultaneously. W h i l e this aesthetic conception corresponded to profound currents in Reyes's o w n w a y of being and of writing, one must not forget the decisive influence that certain authors and philosophers exerted upon him (as well as upon other members of the " A t e n e o " group), a m o n g them O r t e g a y 383 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Gasset, U n a m u n o , W a l d o Frank, and M a x Scheler. T h e influence of O r t e g a y Gasset is of particular importance, not only in the case of Reyes, but for the majority of the essayists of his generation, from Mariátegui (above) to Jorge M a ñ a c h ( i 8 9 8 - 1 9 6 1 ) . O r t e g a initiated a twentiethcentury tradition of influences and reciprocal intellectual b o r r o w i n g s between Spain and Spanish A m e r i c a , the most notable antecedent of w h i c h w a s H o s t o s ' s assimilation of Spanish Krausism as a powerful intellectual stimulus in the battle for Puerto R i c a n independence in the late nineteenth century. Reyes w a s personally acquainted w i t h O r t e g a and they developed a bond of mutual respect and appreciation that is documented in their respective w o r k s . Reyes's friendship w i t h O r t e g a and w i t h so many other peninsular writers can be said to constitute an entire chapter of his intense and fertile relation with Spanish culture. After studying in M a d r i d , Reyes founded the M e x i c a n " C a s a de E s p a ñ a " in 1939, w h i c h provided shelter to Spanish emigrants after the Civil W a r (1936-1939) and w h i c h eventually developed into the " C o l e g i o de M é x i c o , " a center for advanced studies and research. O n e of the central ideas of O r t e g a ' s philosophy - that of the interrelation between the individual and his environment that is so well expressed in the formula often cited from the 1941 Meditaciones del Quijote, " Y o soy y o y mi circunstancia" ["I am myself and my circumstance"] - had special resonance for Spanish A m e r i c a n thinkers and, in particular, for Reyes w h o sought to define the value of autochthonous cultural creation within the context of the great creations of the h u m a n spirit. Perhaps due to the vastness of Reyes's w o r k , readers tend to lose sight of the fact that he, also, formulated his o w n version of the Americanist ideal. In " D i s c u r s o por V i r g i l i o " (1933), for e x a m p l e , he subtly intertwines national issues of the day w i t h the topics of the Georgics. T h e essay presents a viable thesis on the relations between the local and the universal (maintaining that if A m e r i c a n art is authentic, it is irrevocably universal as well), and goes so far as to readdress some of the questions that in the nineteenth century were of concern to Bello (the city versus the countryside) and to Sarmiento (civilization versus barbarism), in order to affirm the need for a return to Nature. A m o n g the most beautiful pages attesting to Reyes's devotion to M e x i c o are those of Visión de Anábuac (1917) in w h i c h he writes of the feelings of spirituality that are a w a k e n e d by natural objects; there is, in this, a marked affinity with O r t e g a n thought as well as a discrete refutation of the determinism that informs Sarmiento's Facundo. Reyes did not believe that being a rigorous philologist {Cuestiones gongorinas, 1927; Capítulos de literatura española, 1939), an erudite Hellenist {La crítica en la edad ateniense, 1941) or a consummate literary 384 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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theorist {El deslinde, 1944) barred him from also being a graceful conversationalist or a savoury teller of anecdotes and humoristic stories. In La experiencia literaria (1942), for e x a m p l e , he manages to define difficult aesthetic concepts at the same time that he entertains his readers w i t h fineries and witticisms such as those found in the essays " L a jitanjáfora" or " A d u a n a s lingüísticas." O n e of his favorite images for the writer w a s that of a hunter w h o ventured far and w i d e to bring a rich and varied feast to his reader's table. Reyes w a s able to imbue academic treatises with the engaging style of journalistic writing, critical studies w i t h the tone of intimate biographical sketches, philosophy w i t h personal memory and historic reflection. A l t h o u g h he also w r o t e poetry, narrative, and theatre, Reyes's most lyric and imaginative passages are to be found in his essayistic w o r k . T h e art of thinking in images — an art that w a s mastered by M a r t i in his time - provides Reyes with instantaneous illuminations that the discourse of the conventional essayist could seldom, if ever, achieve. H i s prose is punctuated w i t h genteel asides and poetic syntheses w h i c h enliven the exposition of ideas and m a k e them clearly visible. Reyes's capacity to illuminate and m a k e transparent the obscure and c o m p l e x , to submerge himself in the deepest of waters only to resurface with a rare and memorable treasure in hand, formed part of his humanistic conception of k n o w l e d g e , wherein e v e r y t h i n g - g r e a t or small, ancient or modern — occupied a precise place. In the vastness of his genius, Reyes is comparable only to such figures as Erasmus, T h o m a s M o r e , M o n t a i g n e , Sor Juana Inés de la C r u z , Diderot, and, perhaps more than anyone else, to G o e t h e , to w h o m he dedicated t w o b o o k s {Idea política de Goethe, 1954; Trayectoria de Goethe, 1954) and with w h o m he shared more than one intellectual affinity. Like him, Reyes subscribed to an ideal of absolute correspondence between life and k n o w l e d g e , or better yet, to the k n o w l e d g e of life, w i t h o u t w h i c h learning becomes a dry and insignificant activity. G o e t h e ' s characterization of all theory as gray and the tree of life as green could well describe Reyes's attitude t o w a r d the interrelation that must operate between the theoretical and the vital. It is perhaps for this reason that Reyes never succumbed to the vanities and miseries that sometimes infiltrate literary circles but a l w a y s stood out for his generosity and affection. His friends and disciples are innumerable; a m o n g them are included literary figures of the importance of Borges and Gabriela Mistral, to name just t w o . R e a d i n g Reyes leaves us w i t h the impression that w e are in the presence of a brilliant and yet reasonable man, w h o is calmly speaking to us about that subject he k n o w s best, in order to make it more clear and amenable. For him, that is precisely the high purpose of the genre he cultivated. T h e essayistic w o r k of Pedro Henríquez Ureña (1884-1916) shares 385 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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certain stylistic elements, themes, and concerns w i t h the w o r k of the Argentinian R i c a r d o Rojas (1882-1957, below) as well as w i t h the M e x i c a n " A t e n e o " g r o u p in general and Reyes in particular, although he does not achieve the same degree of breadth and variety. N o t w i t h s t a n d ing, Henríquez Ureña's contribution to cultural history and to Spanish A m e r i c a n literature is fundamental. A t the core of his meditations lies his profound Americanist passion, w h i c h gave rise to pages and attitudes that w o u l d stimulate entire generations throughout the continent. Henríquez Ureña w a s , a b o v e all, a great teacher, a man of lofty ideals w h o used the professorate to propagate his intense faith in w h a t he called "the utopia of A m e r i c a . " H e addressed such essential questions as the existence of a Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, its characteristic and distinguishing marks, and its loans to and from other cultures. His t w o most important b o o k s are Seis ensayos en busca de nuestra expresión (1928) and Las corrientes literarias en la América Hispánica (1949 translation of a b o o k that w a s first published in English as Literary Currents in Spanish America, C a m b r i d g e , Mass.* 1945), w h i c h is the fruit of eight lectures he gave at H a r v a r d University in 1940. T h e title of the first of these could serve as a rubric to head all of Henríquez Ureña's critical w o r k . It is here that the essay " E l descontento y la p r o m e s a " is included, a piece w h i c h lucidly examines the issues of tradition and rebellion, the problem of language, and the tendency t o w a r d Europeanization. His invitation to descend, w i t h rigor and authenticity, to the very depths of one's o w n personal and cultural experience remains valid even today, as d o the basic tenets of Henríquez Ureña's comprehensive vision of the Spanish A m e r i c a n literary process* a vision that has served as guide to a great number of modern historians. T w o other cultural historians w h o contributed to the Americanist cause from a perspective of national values are the Argentinian R i c a r d o Rojas and the Bolivian Franz T a m a y o (1879-1956). Rojas is the author of the ambitious Historia de la literatura argentina (1921) as well as of Eurindia (1924), wherein he proposes a synthesis of the indigenous and the European as a w a y to achieve the true essence of w h a t is Argentinian. T a m a y o , dn the other hand, defends the indigenist cause w i t h an exalted tone and ideas that could be termed Nietzschean, particularly in La creación de la pedagogía nacional (1910), a " b o o k of battle and of reflection" (Obra escogida, 4) that reacts against the racist thesis of his compatriot A r g u e d a s . T h e M e x i c a n Samuel R a m o s (1897—1959), the Peruvian V i c t o r R a u l H a y a de la T o r r e (1895-1979), and the Argentinian Ezequiel M a r t i n e z Estrada (1895-1964) are very different from each other, but all three represent radical forms of philosophical-political thought. R a m o s is a historical philosopher w h o provides insights on the subject of " M e x i c a n 386 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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i s m . " A disciple and a critic of C a s o (above), R a m o s is a thinker of importance not only for his o w n country, where his ongoing interest in studying and defining the " M e x i c a n " helped shape perceptions of a national identity, but, moreover, for the movement and dissemination of ideas throughout A m e r i c a , to w h i c h he contributed with his k n o w l e d g e of key philosophers of the twentieth century: Scheler, N i c o l a i H a r t m a n n , Alfred A d l e r , and O r t e g a y Gasset. T o a certain extent, R a m o s prolongs and synthesizes the humanist philosophical meditations of V a s c o n c e l o s and Henriquez Urena (above). H e represents a critical opening t o w a r d European thought as a w a y to understand M e x i c a n culture and, more broadly, human nature as protagonist of culture. T h e titles of his t w o best-known b o o k s , Perfil del hombre y la cultura en Mexico (1934) and Hacia un nuevo humanismo: programa de una antropologia fdosofica (1940), already point to the t w o outstanding directions of his philosophi cal w o r k . Perfil is an attempt to characterize the social " p e r s o n a l i t y " of M e x i c o . Inspired by A d l e r ' s psychoanalytic theory on c o m p l e x e s , R a m o s examines the origins of M e x i c a n culture; he suggests that its imitative and derivative nature in relation to European culture has generated a collec tive feeling of inferiority and insecurity a m o n g M e x i c a n s . T h e s e c o m plexes account for the M e x i c a n ' s distrust, defensiveness, and rigidity in the face of change, as he struggles to preserve the " i m a g e " he has created of himself. It is here that M e x i c a n nationalism and machismo have their origin. Hacia un nuevo humanismo establishes the bases upon w h i c h to found a rational neo-humanism, w h i c h w o u l d free the individual from the irresoluble contradictions of capitalist and bourgeois materialism. O n e of R a m o s ' s central ideas (which constitutes a middle road between early M a r x i s t humanism and Scheler's axiology) is the creation of a n e w morality, self-regulated by man's consciousness of his o w n profound aspirations and not by external concepts or criteria imposed u p o n him. R a m o s ' s ideas have been fertile: his observations about the M e x i c a n pelado and his psychological masks were adopted and expanded by O c t a v i o Paz (b. 1914) in his early analyses of the history and society of his country. T h e political and ideological life of modern Peru is dominated by t w o great figures: Mariategui (above) and H a y a de la T o r r e . In point of fact, H a y a de la T o r r e ' s famous polemic w i t h Mariategui and the consequent break between them over the issue of the Frente Unico had significant repercussions for the intellectual and political movement of the continent, w h i c h H a y a termed Indoamerica. Born in Trujillo, the city that w a s also the cradle of the active, youthful bohemia w h i c h w a s crucial to Cesar Vallejo's beginnings as a poet, H a y a ' s early thought w a s marked by Indigenism, revolutionary fervor, and the anti-imperialist sentiment of the day, convictions he shared w i t h Mariategui and Amauta. Exiled and 387 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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persecuted, H a y a completed his education abroad, in other A m e r i c a n countries and in Europe, where his radicalism w a s quieted and submitted to forthright revision. H a y a w a s a politician w h o w r o t e and philosophized, not a true political writer. It is fair to say that his most significant w o r k is not to be found in b o o k s , but rather in the 1924 creation in M e x i c o of the party A P R A (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria A m e r i c a n a ) , a multiclass front w h o s e dramatic and circuitous history could serve as a paradigm of the route followed by non-communist radical groups in the first half of the century. Nonetheless, it is w o r t h w h i l e to mention at least three of his most important b o o k s : El antimperialismo y el APRA, Espacio-tiempo histórico (1948), and Treinta años de aprismo (1956). M a r t í n e z Estrada's essayistic w o r k , though extensive, constitutes only a small fragment of his vast intellectual and creative efforts w h i c h include novels, stories, poetry, and theatre. A s is the case w i t h other outstanding essayists, M a r t i n e z Estrada's moral and emotional profile is clearly inscribed in his w o r k : his voice is grave, somber, disenchanted, and, at the same time, imbued with a prophetic and even messianic passion. T h e moral and political crises that marked the times in w h i c h he lived are clearly reflected in his writing. His revisionism of national history and culture conferred upon him the role of teacher to younger generations. T h i s w a s not a l w a y s a fluid relation since M a r t i n e z Estrada's thought evolved through various phases that at times violently contradicted each other. T h e r e are, h o w e v e r , a number of basic concerns and features in his thought: his admiration for great heroic figures together w i t h his identification with marginalized individuals; his concern for the failure of freedom and justice in the concrete social w o r l d ; the dehumanizing threat of a technological society; the urgent subject of an Argentina trapped between the rise and fall of Peronismo and the t w o W o r l d W a r s . T h e melancholic and pessimistic tone that colors his reflections is strengthened by his readings of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spengler, and Existentialism. Radiografía de la pampa (1933), La cabeza de Goliat (1940), and Muerte y transfiguración de Martín Fierro (1948) are frequently cited as M a r t í n e z Estrada's three fundamental collections of essays. T h e s e b o o k s are, w i t h o u t a doubt, his most influential and best-known; h o w e v e r , equally important in understanding M a r t i n e z Estrada's c o m p l e x interior w o r l d , his memories and obsessions, and a b o v e all, in penetrating the unresolvable conflict between the thinker and the writer w h i c h he embodied, is the 1951 El mundo maravilloso de Guillermo Enrique Hudson. T h e r e are t w o stages of M a r t i n e z Estrada's production, the first lasting until about 1950, and the second marked by a physical distancing from Buenos Aires (which included the brief C u b a n interlude from 1961 to 1963), both signs of his g r o w i n g weariness w i t h Argentina and of his 388



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revolutionary hopes. His w o r k as a w h o l e is s o m e w h a t uneven, reflecting the spiritual fluctuations and intellectual tension w i t h w h i c h he struggled. Radiografía may be read as a critique of Sarmiento's famous "civilization versus b a r b a r i s m " dilemma. For M a r t i n e z Estrada the p a r a d o x is a false one, since true civilization consists of harmony with N a t u r e (a N a t u r e observed w i t h Rousseauian affection.) " C i v i l i z a t i o n " and " N a t u r e , " then, are one and the same, and must be considered from within the f r a m e w o r k of a dialectic system. Ignoring this fact, the city has g r o w n disproportionately, effectively transforming itself into the focus of a n e w barbarism: a rnodern, inhuman, and materialist civilization. Based upon a series of recognizable archetypes and categories (as found in B a c o n , Jung, and Spengler), Radiografía is testimony to M a r t i n e z Estrada's intensely critical vision of the model of Western society that Argentina represented. It is more impressive for the ardour w i t h w h i c h it condemns than for the alternatives it offers. La cabeza de Goliat falls into the same line of attack; it is his most violent accusation of Buenos Aires as the capital and symbolic center of the Argentinian societal model. T h e b o o k ' s thesis generates the graphic and w e l l - k n o w n image of Argentina as an octopus, a monstrous figure constituted by powerless and insubstantial legs (the provinces) and a hypertrophic head (the capital) w h i c h devours and exhausts the energies of the entire social b o d y . W i t h this w o r k , M a r t i n e z Estrada touched a topic that w o u l d continue to reappear in the Spanish A m e r i c a n essay, namely, the criticism of the modern city as the breeding ground of national evils, portrayed by the glaring contradictions of development and b a c k w a r d n e s s . T h e subtitle of Muerte y transfiguración ("Ensayo de interpretación de la vida argentina") points to the w o r k of national interpretation that M a r t i n e z Estrada sought to write using José Hernandez's famous p o e m as a pretext. Large portions of this extensive essay consist of historical and cultural considerations of rural Argentina, its people, and its customs, reaffirming M a r t i n e z Estrada's telluric bond w i t h the p a m p a and w i t h cultural forms that were either marginalized or near extinction. Y e t the pretext g r o w s to assume major proportions: it is an exhaustive study, almost obsessive in its details, w h i c h remains valid today and w i t h w h i c h few rivals can compete as a masterpiece of devotion and erudition. M a r t i n e z Estrada w a s a prophetic voice as well as a brilliant, if not methodical, thinker. H e lived in constant contradiction, trying to understand his w o r l d and himself. In the end, it may be said that these contradictions devoured him and that the synthesis promised by his continuous reexamination w a s never fully achieved. A m o n g the philosophers, the w o r k of the Argentine Francisco R o m e r o (1891-1962) must be placed together w i t h that produced (since the late 389


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nineteenth century) by other R í o de la Plata thinkers interested in pure philosophical speculation and representing varying degrees of idealist reaction against Positivism. T w o founding figures of that branch of Spanish A m e r i c a n thinkers are the Argentinian Alejandro K o r n (18601936), author o f La libertad creadora (1920), and the U r u g u a y a n C a r l o s V a z Ferreira (1872-195 8), w h o s e extensive w o r k includes Moral para intelectuales (1910) and Lógica viva (1910). Born in Spain but raised in Buenos Aires, R o m e r o w a s a disciple of K o r n , his successor for a university professorship, and later his exegete in the b o o k Alejandro Korn, filósofo de la libertad (1956). R o m e r o shares w i t h the M e x i c a n Samuel R a m o s (above) both the influence of Scheler and O r t e g a y Gasset and the humanist orientation. H o w e v e r , R o m e r o ' s humanist leanings are more purely speculative. H e follows a line of thought that could be termed neo-Kantian Personalism, and w h i c h carries traces of K o r n ' s teachings. T h e idea of "transcendence" is essential to his vision of the realization of the being and to the individual's understanding of the high values for w h i c h he is destined. M a n is confronted by a series of dualities w h i c h either tear him apart or confuse him: the individual versus the person, the face versus the mask, and the spirit versus the psyche. T h e s e themes are most fully elaborated in Filosofía de la persona (1944) and Teoría del hombre (1952). R o m e r o w a s also a historian of A m e r i c a n ideas and culture in such w o r k s as Sobre la filosofía en América, Estudios de historia de las ideas (1953), and El hombre y la cultura (1956). His prose style is polished, hallmarked by clarity and precision. M o d e r a t e and elegant, R o m e r o is a preeminent thinker w h o greatly contributed to the develop ment of philosophy on the continent. A review of Spanish A m e r i c a n philosophical essayists cannot be complete w i t h o u t reference to at least t w o writers w h o are chronologi cally at odds and yet fundamentally associated with those thus far examined; while belonging to an earlier period, their mature w o r k coincides in time w i t h that of their younger colleagues. V e r y different from each other, they are joined only by their rarity and their historic marginalization. T h e first is the C u b a n Enrique José V a r o n a (1849-1933) w h o s e early Conferencias filosóficas date from 1880. A s an essayist, V a r o n a w a s interested in H u m a n i s m , history, art, and the question of C u b a n indepen dence. T h e pages of Desde mi belvedere (1907) demonstrate his elegance as a prose writer, his intellectual curiosity, and his deep and often skeptic understanding. H o w e v e r it is the aphorisms collected under the title Con el eslabón (1927) that truly attest to the modernity and the originality of his thought. It is perhaps w o r t h w h i l e to remember that, as a genre, the aphorism has traditionally lent itself to philosophical reflection; in the twentieth century alone, it has been cultivated by a number of Spanish 390 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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A m e r i c a n thinkers, R a m o s , T a m a y o , and V a z Ferreira a m o n g them. V a r o n a ' s aphorisms are truly remarkable, the w o r k of a mature thinker of notable verbal precision. T h e other is the Argentinian M a c e d o n i o Fernández (1841-1922), a disconcerting and unclassifiable author. His written w o r k , dispersed and fragmentary, is brief, something w h i c h is reflective of the character of its author: M a c e d o n i o (this is the name by w h i c h he is best k n o w n ) w a s an " o r a l " creator. H e did not believe in the utility of b o o k s , rejecting them for fixing at a given m o m e n t the free flow of a thought w h i c h should remain uninterrupted. M a c e d o n i o dedicated his entire life, exemplary for a number of reasons, to the enterprise of thinking w h a t others had not thought of before and to playing with the limits of the absurd and o f metaphysical fantasy. A l t h o u g h the w o r d " h u m o r i s t " does not define him, an eccentric and illuminating h u m o r is an essential element in his w o r k . H e w a s a sort of dime-store philosopher w h o contemplated the unfathomable mystery of living and sharing the w o r l d w i t h others through a prism of skepticism and at the same time w a r m t h . T h e author of hypothetical novels w h i c h end before they begin (or begin as they end), he w r o t e mysterious and heterogeneous pages that may be read as unortho d o x essays, halfway between fiction and metaphysics: Tápeles de recienvenido (1929 and 1944) and Miscelánea (1966). M a c e d o n i o s ' s importance can be measured by the indelible impression he left upon disciples of the caliber of Borges and Julio C o r t á z a r , a m o n g others. M o s t writers born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century constitute a g r o u p that is markedly different from that w h i c h preceded them, inasmuch as they were the first w h o s e intellectual b a c k g r o u n d w a s integrally determined by modern changes and events. Earlier ventures at nationalist and Americanist interpretation were supplanted by a retreat to more profound areas of inquiry as essayists became intimately concerned w i t h aesthetic and moral issues of l o o m i n g urgency and complexity. A m o n g those figured questions about the nature and function of the essay itself, w h i c h w a s in the process of examining and redefining its various forms in order to coincide with modern challenges. O n the one hand, the consequences of the great social and political upheavals of the times demanded a questioning of man's position in the w o r l d , of the role of art and culture confronted by the weight of history, and of the possibility of free thought in the midst of doctrinaire ideological determinism. O n the other, there w a s a certain loss of faith, a process of disillusionment, and a subversion of the schemes that had provided an ideological foundation for essayists w h o had c o m e before. T h e essay of the 1930s and 1940s sought to shed light precisely upon the manifestations of the great crisis that afflicted the Western spirit. B e y o n d 391 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


the devastating experience of the Second W o r l d W a r , another historical p h e n o m e n o n had a profound impact on men and w o m e n during these years: the Spanish Civil W a r . A l t h o u g h the conflict that tore Spain apart lasted only three years (1936-1939), it w o u l d have lasting repercussions in the field of politics, in the ideological rifts a m o n g parties of the Left, and in the intellectual life of all the Hispanic realm. T h e Spanish tragedy stirred the conscience of the entire w o r l d ; it engaged intellectuals of all leanings w h o s a w in the w a r not merely an internal struggle, but rather a heroic defense of basic h u m a n rights, of justice, dignity, and culture against the threats of retrograde and intolerant forces. T h e international hegemony exerted by Stalinism, Fascism, and N a z i s m w a s a concrete manifestation of the vilest a m o n g the moral plagues of this century: totalitarianism, complete with its usual humiliations and manipulations of intellectual activity. Paradoxically, the loss of h u m a n potential that Spain suffered as a result of the massive emigration following the Civil W a r represented a gain for Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectual life. Transplanted to the A m e r i c a n continent, numerous writers, thinkers, journalists, and artists not only became assimilated into their new environment, but decisively stimulated it w i t h the creation of a b o d y of w o r k that is perhaps more properly A m e r i c a n than it is Spanish. T h e M e x i c a n philosophical movement, for example, benefitted from the contributions of various exiled Spanish thinkers and philosophers; a m o n g them Jose G a o s (1900—1969), Juan D a v i d G a r c i a Bacca (b. 1901) - both translators of Heidegger - and E d u a r d o N i c o l (b. 1907), all three of w h o m promulgated and revitalized phenomenological and existentialist thought in M e x i c o . O n e primary philosophical current seems to e m b o d y the questioning spirit that marked these years: Existentialism. It imbued intellectual w o r k s of the time w i t h notes of anguish, vitality, disquiet, and selfreflection. T h e other formative intellectual current of this period derived from M a r x i s t revisionism, and proposed commitment, militancy, and the defense of a realist aesthetic as forms of action appropriate to the realms of art and literature. T h e s e aesthetic and philosophical options are fraught w i t h sharp moral edges that a w a k e n e d and even disturbed many people, creating tempestuous polemics some of w h i c h remain open today. All of these issues revitalized the essay in powerful w a y s . A particular p h e n o m e n o n of this period (which has as precursor the w o r k of Alfonso Reyes) is the appearance of the so-called " e n s a y o c r e a d o r " ["creative e s s a y " ] . T h e term must be understood in t w o w a y s : first, in the genre's approach, more marked than ever before, to purely imaginative genres, especially poetry. N o longer consecrated solely as a vehicle of undiluted thought, the essay is raised to a high form of artistic expression, erasing the frontiers that previously separated it from more creative genres of literary invention. Elements of fantasy and imagination invade the essay, 392 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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calling for readers w h o are both subtle and well-informed. T h e text seems to direct a w i n k of complicity to its addressee, offering rich possibilities for reading between the lines and proposing visions of extreme c o m plexity. Secondly, the term can be associated with the emergence of creators w h o feel the need to assume a critical function, reaffirming the importance of this practice to their artistic enterprise. T h e integration of diverse, even antagonistic, forms is a hallmark of contemporary litera ture; the essay does not escape this subversive tendency. Attempts at theorizing are often fraught w i t h creative tension, providing self-reflexive insight into the artistic conscience at w o r k . T h e criteria that defined the essay, imprecise to begin w i t h , are submitted in this period to a radical revision, producing generic heterogeneity, mutual b o r r o w i n g s , and ambi guities, both formal and semantic. Paradoxically, then, the essay achieves a sort of primacy for its totalizing capacities and is reinterpreted as a " s y s t e m " that transmits a profound experience or w o r l d vision, not so different from totalizing attempts in poetry and the novel. (Classic forms of the essay did not altogether disappear; important essayistic w o r k continued to be produced in the specific fields of history, philosophy, literary criticism, etc.) T h e essay becomes the playing field for a game between critics with a creative bent and creators w i t h a propensity for critical w o r k , a g a m e of mutual revelations that is particularly suggestive for the reader. Four prominent figures account for the most innovative changes to take place in the essay: Borges, C o r t á z a r , José L e z a m a L i m a and O c t a v i o Paz. Each one shapes and defines the period to w h i c h they all belong. T h e genius of Jorge Luis Borges (i 899-1986) consisted not only in teaching Spanish Americans to write in a w a y that w a s not k n o w n before, but, moreover, in making people think of literature from a totally n e w perspective. Borges s h o w e d the potential for convergence and harmony that exists between the acts of reading and writing, remembering and imagining, reasoning and dreaming. T h i s potential constitutes a guiding principle of modern literature: the Borgesian principle, unmistakable and yet subject to perpetual reinterpretation and renovation; it postulates a w o r l d of infinite invention open to play as well as to profound thought. Emir R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l ( 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 8 5 ) , one of Borges's best critics, did well to entitle a general anthology of his w o r k Ficcionario (1985) [Fictionary]. A l t h o u g h Borges's belated fame is largely ascribed to his production of short stories (which originated in an unplanned manner and then continued intermittently), he began his literary career writing poems and essays, an activity he fostered w i t h g r o w i n g intensity until the end of his life. In Borges's w o r k , all of these genres, as well as the intermediate forms he cultivated, are mutually explainable within a system of elaborate


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correspondences and intertextual quotations and echoes w h i c h cannot be isolated one from the other. T h e r e is no such thing as a Borges the essayist that is distinguishable from Borges the poet or Borges the short-story writer; all parts of the system remit to the center and to each other. His essayistic w o r k is found not only in his essays per se, but is dispersed a m o n g his stories and poems; to consider any one of these genres by itself constitutes a sort of mutilation w h i c h distorts the w h o l e . Furthermore, it is almost impossible to speak of genres w i t h reference to Borges, a writer w h o continuously violated any and every kinds of frontiers, crossing bounds between philosophy and fiction, between poetry and essays. H o w , for e x a m p l e , does one classify an exemplary text such as " B o r g e s y y o " ["Borges and I " ] , except perhaps as a story that is an essay that is a p o e m . W h a t w o u l d conventionally be defined as Borges's essayistic w o r k is not particularly extensive. Including prologues (a form w h i c h gives full reign to his mastery of allusion and synthesis), the texts of his lectures, and brief essays that form part of b o o k s of other kinds, the number of titles reaches fifteen, but the pages are scarce in number and heterogeneous in themes, almost lateral diversions of a casual reader. T h e y include reflections about the literature about the g a u c h o , alongside meditations on the nature of time, the e x h u m a t i o n of a minor poet like Evaristo Carriego (who w o u l d hardly be remembered today if not for Borges), or a note on the artificial language invented by John W i l k i n s . F r o m this disparate ensemble, three are the key b o o k s : Discusión (1932), Historia de la eternidad (1936), and Otras inquisiciones [Other Inquisitions], N o n e is an integral w o r k : each b o o k gathers texts, very often brief ones, of diverse origins and intentions. O n e quality that immediately strikes the reader is that in spite of the o v e r w h e l m i n g literary information presented and the precise form in w h i c h it is handled, the tone is almost a l w a y s cordial and serene; erudition is tempered by a self-depreciating irony and by expository simplicity. T h i s w a s not a l w a y s the case; the y o u n g essayist of Inquisiciones (1925) or El tamaño de mi esperanza (1926) is surprisingly baroque, bellicose, and o v e r w r o u g h t almost to the point of pedantry. T h e s e were avant-garde years for Borges, in w h i c h he put his ultraista ardor at the service of a militant and iconoclastic Criollismo, a posture he soon repented of assuming. N o one, w i t h the possible exception of Sanín C a n o , had ever written essays like these in A m e r i c a , because no one (or very few) had read texts the w a y Borges did, or much less written about them with the disconcerting dominion and familiarity that his writing exhibits. A s an essayist, Borges managed to incorprate a literary culture that w a s previously almost u n k n o w n to Spanish A m e r i c a n literature and w h i c h , thanks to him, w o u l d c o m e to form an integral part of it; a culture rife w i t h Oriental b o o k s , philosophers and mystics of antiquity, Cabalists and Jewish 394 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Gnostics, forgotten French poets, and, especially, English writers. H o w ever, it is not only the singularity o f Borges's personal library that is so impressive, but rather his capacity to say something unexpected about each of its authors, something entirely different from w h a t had been repeated by literary criticism in the original language of each of these marginal or canonical w o r k s . It m a y be said, as Paul de M a n suggested, that his were "imaginary e s s a y s " (Bloom, Borges 22), if w e understand the expression in a precise w a y : essays of a very personal imagination but stimulated by the imagination of others. Something that surprises the reader w h o recurs to the sources that inspired him is the discovery that, in his interpretive act, Borges projects as much of himself onto the original texts as he does of the original authors onto his o w n readings, a gesture w h i c h effectively infuses the source texts w i t h n e w meaning. In other w o r d s , Coleridge or Chesterton, after Borges's reading, are quite different from Coleridge or Chesterton before Borges. T h e trace of his reading is deep and extremely personal; so much so that at times it may seem arbitrary (one need only recall his repeated readings of Don Quixote, for example, a b o o k w i t h w h i c h he a l w a y s maintained an ambiguous relationship). T h i s arbitrariness ends up being a positive trait, since it is the stuff w i t h w h i c h he moulds a literature that is unmistakably his. His reading is a form of appropriation and of mirror-trick invention: that invention to the second p o w e r (of indelible magic and suggestiveness) that is so characteristically Borgesian. A s H a r o l d B l o o m asserts, " B o r g e s is a great theorist of poetic influence; he has taught us to read B r o w n i n g as a precursor of K a f k a " (ibid. 2). W h a t w e have is a translation of his readings into his o w n literary language and his distinctive aesthetic universe. By these means, Borges is able to integrate all the texts he has read and remembers into an elaborate order, wherein those ideas w h i c h are " h i s " and those w h i c h are b o r r o w e d from others participate in a fertile and highly original dialogue. His b o o k s constitute a library created by an imagination stimulated by other libraries. T h i s is especially visible in his reading of religious, metaphysical, and philosophical texts; Borges has said that the theories of writers such as G . Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, and S w e d e n b o r g were of interest to him not for whatever truth they m a y contain, but rather " f o r their aesthetic value and even for the singular, w o n d r o u s elements they e m b o d y , for their potential to a m a z e " (Otras inquissiciones, 223). In other w o r d s , Borges read religious and philosophical theories purely as exercises for the mind (valid for them selves and not for their objective correlatives). T h e y were fictions conceived to explain the w o r l d , and fair g a m e , therefore, as the basis for essays and stories that speculated on these same matters. Regardless of their subject matter (eternity or the metaphor, H o m e r or cyclical time, our conception of Hell or Z e n o ' s paradox) or of their



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modest external form (mere b o o k reviews, footnotes, or refutations), Borges's essays are, a b o v e all, heterodox propositions, an invitation for the reader to challenge and rethink w h a t is c o m m o n l y accepted, a benevolent intellectual dissidence. W h a t is striking is that these proposals do not impose a predetermined formula, to be accepted as conclusive. T h e reader is free to accept or reject any hypothesis offered as a solution. Indeed here, precisely, lies the text's seduction; no matter h o w far-fetched or improbable a Borgesian hypothesis may seem at the outset, in the end the temptation to succumb to it is irresistible. Borges's essays (like his stories), are an exercise of the free spirit to think and imagine whatever it may. His model argument often proceeds s o m e w h a t paradoxically: first, the statement of a problematic theory or question, whether it be literary, philosophical, or cultural; immediately, a recapitulation of the interpre tive variants the issue has elicited; next, the p r o o f of some logical error that invalidates these; and finally, the examination of possible alterna tives, including Borges's o w n , accompanied by the suspicion that these t o o are pervaded by some still undisclosed fallacy. Borges's agnosticism and philosophical skepticism (a legacy of his readings of the Cabalists and English idealists) is the intellectual b a c k d r o p for this literary operation w h i c h is colored by a running ironic commentary on the l a w s of h u m a n k n o w l e d g e and its principal instrument, language. L a n g u a g e is, precisely, the central preoccupation in Borges's w o r k and one that he addressed from his earliest essays. T h r o u g h o u t these, and primarily in El idioma de los argentinos, there are visible traces of C r o c e ' s ideas concerning the nature of literary language, particularly w i t h respect to the allegory and verbal expression. V e r y soon, Borges began to distance himself from C r o c e , underscoring the discrepancies that separate their ideas. T h e essays " D e las alegorías a las n o v e l a s " and " N a t h a n i e l H a w t h o r n e " (Otras inquisiciones) mark this transition as well as Borges's g r o w i n g a p p r o x i m a t i o n to Chesterton, a writer w i t h w h o m he felt a great affinity. It is not difficult to recognize the founding literary principles of Borges's w o r k : the virtual impossibility of Realism in the face of an inexhaustible reality; the conception of writing as an exercise of reduction, selection, and suppression - i.e., to invent, not to produce an impossible copy of lived experience; the notion that allegory is an ideal vehicle for thinking in images, and not, as c o m m o n l y believed, for abstract thought. Y e t the fundamental question underlying all these propositions is an essential one for any reader or writer, namely, w h a t are the limits of language? H o w can the w o r l d be represented through a succession of sounds and conventional signs (or, to quote Borges, quoting Chesterton, through a series of "grunts and screeches" (ibid.)} T h e very nature of language is a sober w a r n i n g to 396



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the writer seeking to create something new: the most w e can hope to achieve is a reiteration, w i t h variants, of w h a t has previously been said. In other w o r d s , w e can only hope to master the instrument of language by w o r k i n g within tradition and not against it. It is easy to understand w h y modern linguistic theorists and representatives of the French school of theoreticians - from M a u r i c e Blanchot to M i c h e l Foucault - have found Borges's thought so stimulating and have added his name, to Borges's surprise, to the list of precursors of their most sophisticated ideas. In addition to these essays, the central texts that elucidate Borges's conception of literature (remembering that for him literature is inextric ably bound to metaphysical and theological questions concerning such issues as the nature of time or the personality of G o d ) are: " L a supersticiosa ética del l e c t o r , " " L a postulación de la realidad," " E l arte narrativo y la m a g i a , " and " E l escritor argentino y la t r a d i c i ó n " ["The Superstitious Ethic of the R e a d e r , " " T h e Postulation of R e a l i t y , " " N a r r a tive A r t and M a g i c , " " T h e Argentine Writer and T r a d i t i o n " ] from Discusión; " L a s k e n n i n g a r " ["The K e n n i n g a r " ] from Historia de la eternidad; and " N u e s t r o pobre i n d i v i d u a l i s m o " ["Our Poor Individual ism"] from Otras inquisiciones. A careful reading of these texts reveals that in spite of their casual air and their pretensionless tone, they constitute a true literary theory, unsystematic but coherent, and attaining the farthest reaches ever attempted in Spanish A m e r i c a n thought and literature. After Borges, Spanish A m e r i c a n letters w o u l d never again be w h a t they once w e r e . T h e curious reader w h o scans his pages will be rewarded in yet another w a y : through the subtle h u m o r that infuses his writings w i t h a grace and w i t previously only found in Reyes, w i t h w h o m Borges maintained close intellectual ties. Borges's irony is a manifestation of his belief that writing is a natural activity and that to associate it w i t h grandiose personalities or ideas is nothing but vanity. His h u m o r is revealed from the very cover of his b o o k s ; w h a t is more ironic than titling a b o o k Historia de la eternidad or another, of scarcely more than one hundred pages, Historia universal de la infamia (1935)? W h a t can be said of texts like " L a s alarmas del doctor A m é r i c o C a s t r o " ["The A l a r m s of D o c t o r A m é r i c o C a s t r o " ] or " A r t e de injuriar" ["The A r t of Insult"], that are insuperable diatribes, every line of w h i c h is filled w i t h barbs as caustic as they are exultant? Borges's irony is, a b o v e all, a self-inflicted one; it reflects his conception of his role as writer, practicing his craft w i t h probity, if w i t h o u t hope, as if battling in name of a lost cause. In this light, it is possible to understand w h y the texts that comprise Historia universal de la infamia first appeared in a pastime magazine or w h y the literary reviews and brief biographies written by Borges between 1936 and 1940 and recently edited under the title of Textos cautivos [Captive Texts] were

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originally published in an Argentinian magazine for housewives. Borges is a writer w h o s e intellectual rigor (like that of a geometer or an architect of labyrinths and pyramids) does not prevent him from being gentle and entertaining the w a y few other writers have been; that is perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid him. If literary greatness is measured by the pleasure that reading and re-reading a writer's text produces, then Borges is unquestionably a m o n g the greatest. T h e r e is an intertwining w e b of convergences and divergences entan gling Borges, C o r t á z a r , and José L e z a m a L i m a ( 1 9 1 0 - 1 9 7 6 ) . W i t h C o r t á zar, Borges shares (particularly at the beginning) a vision of the w o r l d as a strange and disconcerting place; Borges and L e z a m a share a c o m m o n affinity for Francisco de Q u e v e d o , Chesterton, and V a l é r y , and, mor eover, a conception of literary creation as an ordered entity c o m p o s e d of fragments that all remit to a center — the poetic image. Y e t the differences separating the three are also significant: C o r t á z a r ' s mature w o r k is almost the antithesis of Borgesian metaphysics, inasmuch as it attempts to discover the profound sense of historical reality. L e z a m a ' s later w o r k , meanwhile, is arduously and almost deliriously baroque, formally at odds with Borges's brand of textual e c o n o m y and blinding sharpness. N o n e t h eless, as essayists, all three elaborated texts that in their c o m p l e x i t y , their scope, and their richness reveal the existence of an analogous relation between them: their waitings are universes of thought and reflection that spin in distinct but overlapping orbits. W h i l e L e z a m a ' s first important b o o k s of essays, Analecta del reloj, La expresión americana, and Tratados en La Habana date from 1953, 1957, and 1958, respectively, few readers outside C u b a k n e w of them before 1966, the year of publication of his major novel, Paradiso. Its appearance, during that period k n o w n as the Boom in the Spanish A m e r i c a n novel, p r o v o k e d the rediscovery of his early essays and p o e m s . T h e obscurity that surrounds L e z a m a at the start of his writing career and the literary isolation that marked his earlier w o r k s contrast sharply w i t h the popular ity and intellectual prestige that he has since enjoyed (outside C u b a more so than on the island, where his relation w i t h revolutionary politics g r e w increasingly strained). After Paradiso, L e z a m a published a huge collec tion of essays: La cantidad hechizada (1970) that confirmed his mastery of the genre. A distinctive trait of L e z a m a ' s w o r k is its inherent " C u b a n n e s s , " defined in terms of a literary tradition that establishes close ties w i t h its classical peninsular roots (in L e z a m a ' s case, particularly through the figure of Luis de G ó n g o r a , as well as w i t h the island's African heritage and criollo culture. N a t i o n and w o r l d , tradition and innovation, spiritualism and sensuality are, for L e z a m a , parts of the same w h o l e ; a totality that is o v e r w h e l m i n g , encyclopedic, and c o m p l e x to the point of seeming 398 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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babelish and excessive. L e z a m a absorbs the w o r l d of culture w i t h a universal curiosity that is indifferent to boundaries of time, language, or origins. N o t h i n g is extraneous; instead, everything occupies a revered and precise place within a great overall design, like the threads of an unfinished, multicolored tapestry. His is a baroque aesthetic where nothing is wasted and in w h i c h each form is a voluptuous composition of materials, tones, and textures of infinite variety. L e z a m a is not, nor ever desired to be, easily understood: " O n l y w h a t is difficult is stimulating" he w r o t e in the opening lines of La expresión americana. If the supreme Borgesian figure is the labyrinth of maddening symmetry, L e z a m a ' s is a twisting spiral, decorated to the point of obsession and even impenetrable confusion. H e is a fascinating writer, but also one w h o lets himself be carried a w a y by the proliferating, circular rhythms of his prose and w h o sometimes gets lost in a void where he hears only his o w n voice. Like the mythic Narcissus he used as a poetic image, L e z a m a contemplates himself in a verbal mirror of his o w n creation, only to fall in love w i t h the feast that satisfies his senses, excited while listening, complacently, to his o w n O r p h i c songs. O r d e r is not one of L e z a m a ' s virtues; instead, his text proffers the unexpected suggestion, the chance finding of a forgotten treasure, and, a b o v e all, the immersion into incandescent levels of the verbal act and of the process of thinking and imagining. For him that process does not consist of ideas, exactly, but o f sparks of ideas: brisk collisions of burning materials, violent encounters of historic or fantastic images. L e z a m a ' s art is a digressive one wherein Leitmotives and pretexts are often much more important than final propositions. T h e form in w h i c h he w e a v e s relations and analogies between disparate realities attests not only to his vast erudition but also to his powerful imagination. A n y one essay of La expresión americana suffices as proof. " S u m a s críticas de lo a m e r i c a n o , " for example, opens w i t h a discussion of Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinski, and James Joyce as models of the innovative spirit of the twentieth century and closes w i t h reflections about the influence of the landscape in Spanish A m e r i c a n creative spirit, after references to Egypt, the M i d d l e A g e s , and the heroic death of José M a r t í . Despite the essay's thematic heterogeneity, the argument is visible: A m e r i c a n invention involves an exercise in ecumeni cal synthesis, of w h i c h L e z a m a ' s o w n writing is a paradigm. It may be said that a m o n g the myriad images that fly through L e z a m a ' s imagination to be illuminated by a penetrating ray of light, there are t w o fundamental themes: poetry and the conception of Spanish A m e r i c a as cultural creation. His singularity as an essayist consists in marrying the t w o and reelaborating them as a single Utopian proposition that perceives the A m e r i c a n continent as the promise of a n e w "imaginary e r a , " capable of prolonging the universal creations of other times. T h e very term 399



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"imaginary e r a " is a seed of that promise, inasmuch as it establishes an unheard-of alliance between history and poetic imagery. T h e essay " L a s imágenes p o s i b l e s " (Analecta del reloj) proposes that the image is, in fact, "the last of all possible histories" (Lezama, El reino imaginario, 218). T h i s idea presupposes a complete reimagining of Spanish A m e r i c a n cultural history and, consequently, of the Americanist question. In a completely free reinterpretation of the ideas of Spengler, Ernst R. Curtius, and T o y n b e e , L e z a m a proposes: to establish the diverse eras where the image imposed itself as history. That is to say, the Etruscan, the Carolingian, and the Breton imagina tions, wherein historical events acquired their reality and gravitation by being born onto the tapestry of an imaginary era. If a culture does not succeed in creating a kind of imagination. . ., it would become grossly undecipherable once burdened with the quantitative freight of millen nia, (ibid., 374) T h i s proposal can only be understood through an appreciation of L e z a m a ' s idea of the poetic image as the center of his thought. By creating a n e w meaning, the image assumes a " n e w causality"; it proposes a n e w w a y of interpreting life and history and, at the same time, of o v e r c o m i n g their limitations. T h e image is both reason and w o n d e r . T h i s is w h y L e z a m a writes that although poetry is "submerged in a pelagic w o r l d , it is never illogical" (ibid., 313). His historical conception is V i c o n i a n : a system of cycles governed by certain archetypes, myths, or symbols repeating variations on themes of the imagination that manifest them selves through the poetic language of each period. H u m a n history is the history of h u m a n imagination and, in this sense, everything tends t o w a r d an ontological or epiphanic vision of human society. A l t h o u g h his vision seems extreme, it is not unlike theories developed by certain sectors of modern historiography in attempts to explain h o w humankind imagines and configures its institutions (for e x a m p l e , C o r n e lius Castoriades's L'institution imaginaire de la société [1975] [The Imaginary Institution of Society]). In one sense, L e z a m a installs himself in the rigorous tradition of hermeticism and Catholic-rooted mysticism. Y e t he cannot repress a D i o n y s i a n , erotic, and jubilant countercurrent that is perhaps best reflected in his sense of h u m o r — C u b a n , through and through — and in the liberties of informal chat that his discourse takes. Readers of Tratados en la Habana, particularly its second part, are able to savour this freshness firsthand. L o g o s and Eros, k n o w l e d g e and play, are the extremes within w h i c h his texts orbit, sometimes with dazzling velocity. L e z a m a ' s baroque spirit rejoices in contrasts and excesses to such an extent that these sometimes reach the most arbitrary distortions. Like G ó n g o r a , he can be admirable, but also irritating. His verbosity some400 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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times borders on tautology, as w h e n he writes: " T h e semblance of an image and the image of a semblance, unite the semblance w i t h the i m a g e " (ibid. 218). Y e t this tendency t o w a r d obscurity and w o r d play is not a falsely assumed pose but the fruit of an intoxicating k n o w l e d g e that overflows onto a prose that is almost incantatory and ritual in its incessant flow. N o one has ever thought - or written - the w a y L e z a m a did; probably no one ever will. His intellectual and imaginary structures found their match in a fertile, reverberating language that w a s able to embrace and express them and that is truly inimitable. In contrast to Borges and L e z a m a L i m a , Julio C o r t á z a r (1914-1979) is not " f o r m a l l y " an essayist. H o w e v e r , his exceptional narrative w o r k and particularly his short stories - led him to write a small number of essays that, while being extremely personal in nature, were also enor mously influential in shaping the literary concepts of his time. It is k n o w n that he used his novels and stories as means of aesthetic reflection and criticism; conversely, his essays can be read as byproducts of his creative w o r k , but are not for this reason any less original. C o r t á z a r ' s essayistic texts are, in the first place, exceptionally valuable in order to take a close look at his private laboratory and at the w a y he conceived of the literary experiments, games, and excursions his w o r k practices. Furthermore, they define the evolution of an aesthetic that distinguished itself for remaining faithful to its central principles, but that nonetheless leaned in the direction of constant change and redefinition. It is an aesthetic that implies not only an intellectual morale, but also an ideological and political stand. C o r t á z a r published most of his brief essays in miscellaneous volumes in w h i c h he put together p o e m s , anecdotes, and anything that w a s s o m e h o w excluded from other b o o k s . Genres, and even the concept of b o o k s themselves, were empty conventions that aroused his iconoclastic rebel liousness. His most important essays are found in the miscellanies La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos (1967) [Around the Day in Eighty Worlds], Ultimo round (1969) [Last Round], and Territorios (1978) [Territories]; other fundamental essays, such as "Para una p o é t i c a " (1954) and " A l g u n o s aspectos del c u e n t o " (1962-1963), have appeared in various literary journals. A defining feature of these texts is the intimacy of their tone and the informal manner - irreverent, most of the time - w i t h w h i c h they focus on their topics. In a genre that sometimes tends t o w a r d solemnity and in a continent where the literary practice can assume annoying pretensions, C o r t á z a r ' s essays are a breath of fresh air, vivacity, and cordial intelligence; they exemplify the art of expressing profound thoughts w i t h o u t sacrificing daringness, openness, or textual freedom in the process. T h i s is perhaps the result of the passionate and lucid conviction that supported his ideas, w h i c h were never systematically 401 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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learned theories. C o r t á z a r ' s texts d o not w a n t to become crystallized as essays; they are loaded w i t h self-criticism and a playful self-ridicule. Territorios, for e x a m p l e , opens w i t h a sort of prologue ("Explicaciones más bien confusas") in w h i c h Polanco and C a l a c , t w o archetypical figures of mental routine and obtuseness, w e l l - k n o w n to C o r t á z a r ' s readers, reappear to ridicule the author and his decision to publish the b o o k . C o r t á z a r ' s thought presents a number of characteristic emblems that are part of the personal m y t h o l o g y of his narrative and w h i c h effectively create n e w bridges between the arts of story-telling and reflection. T h e figure of the " c r o n o p i o , " and the sponge and chameleon metaphors he develops each have a precise meaning in his aesthetic formulations. T h e first is representative of the individual w h o creates not only through art but also in life, thus resolving an age-old false dilemma; the sponge image serves as a figure for the process of osmosis involved in artistic experience, whereby through an act of transmutation or alchemy, the subject takes hold of an object that w a s initially alien to him, absorbs it, and incorporates it into his ontological reality. T h e chameleon is symbolic of our insatiable desire to be something other than w h a t w e are and of the risks w e are willing to take in order to live in an u n k n o w n , but more authentic, dimension. T h i s conception of art and life has a number of significant repercussions; the most critical is the dissolution of subject and object that occurs at the m o m e n t of artistic reception, and their subse quent fusion in a place that is neither here nor there. For C o r t á z a r , the aesthetic phenomenon occurs in an interstitial space halfway between the " I " and the " o t h e r . " T h e revelation a l w a y s takes place in an in-between, in a space that did not exist previously and that is the mutual creation of the contemplating subject and the object of contemplation. T o experience art requires the abandonment of the self, a realm dominated by habit and passivity. In the essay entitled " C a s i l l a del c a m a l e ó n , " C o r t á z a r defines the poet as the individual w h o renounces the preservation of his o w n identity in the act of knowing, precisely because the unmistakable sign, that clover mark below the nipple from the fairy-tales, is given to him, from early on, by the experience of feeling himself, at every step, another; of being able to step out of himself to enter the entities that absorb him and to abandon himself to the object that will become a song, to the physical or moral matter whose lyric combustion will provoke the poem. {La vuelta al día en 8o mundos, n: 190) A l t h o u g h C o r t á z a r cites copiously from Keats, paying a sort of h o m a g e to the great English poet, the essay contains a sharp criticism of the notion of the romantic self, as well as an attack on the conceptual simplicity of certain advocates of engage literature. His defense of creative freedom and 402 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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of the importance of moral responsibility in the exercise of this freedom, culminates w i t h a clearly sarcastic ideological definition: That's why, ma'am, I was telling you that many will not understand this chameleon's walk through the variegated rug, even though my favorite color and my preferred route can be discerned merely by looking closely: anyone knows I inhabit the left, [that I am] in the red. But I will never speak about them explicitly, or maybe I will, I neither promise nor deny anything. {ibid. 193) T h e fluidity of the play of correspondences between the real and the imaginary, the personal and the historic, and even between forms and the undercurrents that m o v e them, is essential to C o r t á z a r ' s creative enter prise. T h i s is also true for his essays, captivating, a b o v e all, because they exist on the very margins of the genre, as personal attempts to establish n e w routes and n e w modulations for it. T h e a p p r o x i m a t i o n of literary creation to the act of play, to l o v e - m a k i n g , and to jazz improvisation is a significant gesture on C o r t á z a r ' s part. In " M e l a n c o l í a de las m a l e t a s " he writes passionately about the value a jazz fan ascribes to hearing the successive " t a k e s " that are necessary for a recording. H e ends up d r a w i n g a parallel between practice and " t a k e " that can be read as a poetics: Difference between practice and take. A practice leads gradually towards perfection, does not count as product, is present as function of a future. In a take, creation includes its own criticism and for that reason is repeatedly interrupted in order to begin anew; the insuffi ciency or failure of a take serves as practice for the next o n e . . . T h e best literature is always a take, a risk implicit in performance, a margin of danger that produces the pleasure of driving, of love. . . 1 would like to write nothing but takes. {ibid. 172) It is only fair to say that C o r t á z a r the narrator, C o r t á z a r the poet, and C o r t á z a r the essayist were a l w a y s faithful to this wish. T h a t faithfulness revitalized and enriched Spanish A m e r i c a n literature. For his interest in Orientalism, for his focus on the hermetic, the marginal, or the forgotten forms of culture, for his insatiable aesthetic curiosity (which spanned the g a m u t from neurotic art to strip-tease, from sports to electronic music), he is the Spanish A m e r i c a n essayist w h o most approximates Barthes, particularly the Barthes of Mythologies (1957), although w i t h o u t sharing the latter's theorizing passion. F e w in the twentieth century have reached the poetic intensity or the depth of thought that distinguish O c t a v i o Paz (b. 1914). A s in Borges and L e z a m a , there is a sense of totality that unifies Paz's extensive lyrical and essayistic production; it can be said that they constitute a true system of communicating vessels, to b o r r o w Breton's famous image. T h e poetic act is the experience that most concerns Paz as an essayist; reciprocally, 403 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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critical reflection is central to his poetic w o r k . Ideas and images, chains of rhythms and of concepts, all remit to a v o r t e x of passion and lucidity that have had profound emotional and intellectual impact both inside and outside the continent. Since the late 1940s, Paz has been one of the most active and influential contemporary literary figures of Spanish A m e r i c a . For a writer w h o published journalistic criticism and his first b o o k s of poetry in the 1930s, the beginnings of Paz's mature essayistic w o r k are s o m e w h a t belated; his first b o o k of essays, El laberinto de la soledad, did not appear until 1950 (its English translation, The Labyrinth of Solitude, w a s published in 1961.) M o r e o v e r , it w a s not until the second expanded edition of 1959 that the b o o k - considered Paz's most influential — acquired its present form, marking the birth of a prose and a thought that w o u l d become unmistakably his. T h e genesis and structure of the b o o k deserve attention. Paz's stimulus for writing it w a s his brief experience as the recipient of a scholarship to the United States (1944). His travels throughout California and N e w Y o r k confronted him w i t h the double strangeness of an u n k n o w n country and a Latin (and especially M e x i c a n ) culture extrapolated from its place of origin. T h e b o o k w a s a search for the historic roots of M e x i c a n culture, a question about its identity, and a portrait of the individuals w h o keep that culture alive both within and outside its geographic borders. A l t h o u g h centered on historical and sociopsychological issues that define M e x i c a n n e s s , El laberinto de la soledad is a contribution to the unabated Americanist question, inasmuch as it is an impassioned inquiry into the character of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture in the face of N o r t h A m e r i c a n nationalism and hegemony. T h e influence of Samuel R a m o s (1897-1959), w h o s e theory about the personality of the M e x i c a n Paz defends against detractors, is apparent in El laberinto de la soledad; so too is the influence of Existentialism, particularly in its questioning of authenticity, of the dilemma between the individual and the " o t h e r , " and of the solitude that generates historic alienation. Likewise, a close reading uncovers a change in tone and focus between the first five chapters, tracing the spiritual profile of the M e x i c a n , and the last three, recounting the historical destiny of the country, from its origins through the present. T h e epilogue, w h i c h did not form part of the first edition, is a deep philosophic meditation about love as a path out of the labyrinth of solitude and about the moral responsibility of the M e x i c a n in the modern w o r l d . Paz exalts the virtues of myth, poetry, and Utopia, as opposed to pure h u m a n reason, w h i c h has led us to the very borders of annihilation. Everything must be rethought, the labyrinthine path retraced. T h e basic repertory of the ideas and formulations w h i c h configure Paz's philosophy are already present in El laberinto de la soledad: his unshak able faith in poetry as a means to freedom; the play of masks and true 404 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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realities that challenges the thrust to k n o w ; his theory of love as the a c k n o w l e d g m e n t of the indispensable essence of the " o t h e r " ; the promise and the failure of revolution; the dialectic between silence and utterance, between the instant and eternity. W h i l e some of the sociological obser vations of El laberinto de la soledad have become outdated w i t h time - the 1970 Postdata [The Other Mexico: Critique de la Pyramid] is an attempt to update these — there is no d o u b t that the w o r k is seminal. T h e long list of b o o k s of essays, articles, and critical commentaries that Paz has accumulated over time makes the selection of the most important difficult, not merely because of their sheer abundance, but moreover, because of the breadth of their themes and their far-reaching proposals. His essays are a c o m p e n d i u m of all that can interest a modern man of universal aspirations: hermetic poetry, erotic customs, Hinduism, criti cism of the totalitarian state, avant-garde art, magic, drugs, translation, myths, h i s t o r y . . . In this sense, Paz is like Reyes and even more like O r t e g a y Gasset, both rigorous thinkers w h o were also witnesses of their times, seduced by the analysis of all current events. T h e thousands of prose pages that Paz has written constitute a sort o f encyclopedia of w h a t a man k n o w s , and especially of w h a t a man hopes to k n o w . In spite of the enormous heterogeneity that colors his w o r k , several b o o k s can be singled out as keys to understanding his thought, w i t h o u t forgetting that there are important texts in other collections as well. El arco y la lira (1956) [The Bow and the Lyre] is one of Paz's most beautiful and most important essays. Its subject is poetry (or better yet, the p o e m ) , the specific character of poetic revelation, and the function of poetry in our time. T h e b o o k is at once a rigorous study of the form and meaning of poetry and a meditation that can be read as the personal poetics of a masterful creator. T h e idea of tension that already appears in the title - objects that vibrate, charged w i t h a sense of imminence and resonance - alludes to Paz's o w n poetic vision as well as to his deep belief that poetry, far from being a superfluous practice of the minorities, is of critical importance in our times. In the promise of c o m m u n i o n it holds, poetry is capable of transforming civilization, m a k i n g it into something truly h u m a n . O n c e again it is w o r t h w h i l e noting that it is the second, expanded edition of El arco y la lira (1967) that best expresses Paz's thoughts on these matters. T h e years that elapsed between the first and second editions of the b o o k were decisive ones for Paz; they coincide w i t h his second stay in Paris (1960-1962) and a stay in India (1962-1968), t w o cultural experiences that p r o v o k e d a reformulation of his aesthetic and philosophical beliefs. T h e traces of Surrealism and p o s t w a r European thought that marked his earlier w o r k did not disappear altogether, but were recast and creatively integrated w i t h n e w ideas, resulting in a syncretism that is perhaps the 405 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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most outstanding feature o f his mature w o r k . It is precisely this capacity for synthesis that best characterizes Paz's writing, together w i t h the p o w e r of the images that express it. Everything - from Japanese art to the A v a n t G a r d e , philosophy to anthropology, Oriental cultures to modern poetics — is absorbed by a powerful imagination wherein it is processed and transformed into something n e w and original. El arco y la lira opens a discussion that will be recurrent in Paz's w o r k : the criticism o f Western culture. In contrast to Oriental cultures, Western culture has lost the fertile dialogue that links the spirit to the b o d y , religion to eroticism, reason to passion. O u r w o r l d is a divided one; poetry is the instrument for its reintegration. T h e r e is a certain brand o f mysticism in Paz, but it is a godless one, based instead o n the individual's desires and urgencies to m a k e this life, and not the other, transcendental. T w o relatively brief essays bear witness to Paz's double meeting w i t h Structuralism and the Orient: Claude Levi Strauss (1967) [Claude Levi Strauss: An Introduction] and Conjunciones y disyunciones (1969) [Con junctions and Disjunctions]. T h e first is a valuable summary of the French anthropologist's structuralist theories and o f their philosophical, linguis tic, and aesthetic repercussions; moreover, it is an updating o f Paz's ideas in those same fields. T h e b o o k is thus an intellectual portrait and selfportrait, simultaneously. T h e second essay started out as a prologue to a b o o k , w h i c h later g r e w into meditations and digressions about the differences between Eastern and Western sexual customs, between the concepts o f body and non-body, between Buddhist and M e d i e v a l art, and between signs and realities. P a z incorporates his observations into a sweeping design that reinterprets Western culture and establishes unex pected relations between all its constitutive elements: science, aesthetics, religion, politics, ethics. T h e repressive Western spirit accounts for the rebelliousness that has e x p l o d e d everywhere throughout the modern w o r l d . W h a t has been denied for centuries wants to m a k e its presence k n o w n , through the promises held in love and poetry. Paz's most outstanding contribution to the criticism o f modern art (which in the last several years, has more than ever attracted Paz's interest) is the 1972 b o o k , Apariencia desnuda (second, expanded edition, 1978) [Marcel Duchamp or The Castle of Purity]. T h e collection includes t w o essays about M a r c e l D u c h a m p that are introductions to his art and detailed studies o f t w o o f his most important masterpieces. Paz's interest in and admiration for D u c h a m p c o m e as n o surprise: D u c h a m p embodies the attitudes o f total rebellion and critical irony that place modern art at the very limits o f its o w n denial and renovation. T h e s e ideas are expanded and reelaborated in Los hijos del limo (1974) [Children of the Mire], w h i c h traces a brief history o f the evolution o f modern poetry, from R o m a n t i c i s m through the present, and examines the fundamental 406 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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questions that have defined it: the tendency t o w a r d rupture, irony, analogical thought, and revolutionary fascination. T h e b o o k refined and popularized the concept of " m o d e r n i t y " w h i c h , despite having been introduced in the European critical idiom by Jürgen H a b e r m a s and others, w a s generally ignored by Spanish A m e r i c a n critics; the w o r d has since been accepted as c o m m o n currency in critical debate. A m o n g Paz's most recent productions, several b o o k s merit attention. El signo y el garabato (1973) is a collection of essays about culture, technology, art and poetry; the first essay expresses an idea that is c o m m o n to the rest of the b o o k : "If the [atomic] b o m b has not destroyed the w o r l d , it has destroyed our idea of the w o r l d " (p. 14). El ogro filantrópico (1979), is another collection of essays and texts of diverse caliber and intention, but all centered on the criticism of the technocratic and totalitarian modern state and its relations with the artist or intellec tual. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe (1982) [Sor Juana or the Traps of Faith], is Paz's most important w o r k of literary criticism since El arco y la lira; it is also a fascinating examination of colonial M e x i c a n society, of the conflicts between church d o g m a s and intellectual freedom, as well as of the position of a w o m a n , within this context. H o w e v e r , the most original, unusual, and even radical essay Paz has ever written is, w i t h o u t doubt, El mono gramático, (1974) [The Monkey Grammarian] (originallyfmblished in French, 1972). It is a text that seems to contain all the questions, visions, and images that have disquieted Paz's spirit. T o call it an " e s s a y " is perhaps a misnomer, since it trespasses all the frontiers of the genre: it is a prose p o e m , an account of a ritual journey, and at the same time, a meditation about poetry, art, and about the very act of writing the text. Perhaps, it w o u l d be more precise to call it by an expression coined by Paz himself: a "constellation of signs." Paz's ideas about analogy and convergence as essential operations of poetic language are here put into practice. T h e text blends t w o separate scenes made h o m o l o g o u s by the imagination - an English garden in C a m b r i d g e and the road to G a i t a in India - and sets forth in search of something beyond those realities: an absolute where differences are resolved in the superior reality of poetic revelation, enhanced by artistic visions and by Oriental mysti cism. T h e b o o k is a living metaphor for the act that engenders it: for the acts of reading and writing as paths that entwine and fuse as the bodies of t w o lovers in a passionate embrace. T h e striking unity of Paz's thought and his faithfulness to certain fundamental notions does not imply, h o w e v e r , that his thought has not evolved and undergone revisions over time. T h e changes that punctuate his w o r k are perhaps most visible in his political writing and in his cultural criticism. Paz has progressively distanced himself from the various ideological positions he has held at different stages in his career (the 407 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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road to G a l t a in India - and sets forth in search of something b e y o n d those defense of Republican Spain, M a r x i s t humanism, ideological art, and support of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n in its early stages); he has adopted, instead, a more guarded or perhaps more skeptical attitude t o w a r d contemporary historical events, both inside and outside Spanish A m e r i c a . His horrified vision of Stalinism has resulted in his fear that revolutionary radicalism will lead to a cataclysmic repetition of history. N o t w i t h s t a n d ing ideological shifts, Paz's evolution has in no w a y clouded the lucidity and dialectic transparency of his thought or the exemplary beauty of his prose style. T h i s beauty is double: interior, inasmuch as it presupposes an exact correspondence w i t h the movement of the ideas discussed; exterior in its embellishment of those ideas w i t h an indelible form that w e tend to identify w i t h truth. Paz's prose is elastic, intense, made of r a w nerve; it moves unabatedly from one thing to another in a succession of transfor mations, parallels, contrasts, and h o m o l o g i e s that a w a k e n powerful convictions. His elegance is intellectual rather than rhetorical, made of daring synthesis and condensations. T h e suppression of logical or merely explanatory connectives (manifested as colons replacing entire sentences or c o m m a s joining opposing levels of discourse) together w i t h the use of enumerative series, litanies, and incantatory formulas lend his prose a swiftness and levity that make it akin to the act of thinking. Paradoxically, this rhetorical concision produces an abundance of images and brings out richness that w a s previously unperceived. R i g o r o u s and sensual, impassioned and meditative, Paz's prose is like his poetry; or better yet, inasmuch as it is a critical exercise of language, it represents the other face of poetic form. T w o novelists, Ernesto Sabato (b. 1 9 1 1 ) and Alejo Carpentier ( 1 9 0 4 1980), have each played significant roles in the development of the Spanish A m e r i c a n essay in the twentieth century. Sabato is a thinker of the European humanist tradition. His intellectual evolution and his decision to write literature were largely influenced by a number of extraneous factors: his disenchantment w i t h science (he received a doctorate in physics in 1938 and w o r k e d in the C u r i e s ' laboratory in Paris), his allegiance to and subsequent repudiation of the C o m m u n i s t Party, and his firsthand experience of Europe on the brink of the Second W o r l d W a r . A l t h o u g h he w a s in contact w i t h the surrealist g r o u p in the Paris of 1939 and his intellect, trained in scientific reasoning, succumbed to the fascination of the irrational, Sabato's w o r k is more directly colored by existentialist ideas. T h i s Existentialism is reflected not only in the matters that concerned him - freedom, evil, rebellion against the dehumanizing abstraction of social norms, the dark side of life, the psychological impact of everyday acts - but also in his embittered, somber, and sarcastic tone. His mentors, furthermore, are easily discernible: Kierkegaard, D o s toyevsky, Sartre, and C a m u s . 408 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Sábato's essays present him as an intuitive and non-conformist philoso pher and not as a theoretician. H e is a thinker w h o meditates through his sensibility, finding his w a y amidst sharp contradictions. T h e very form of his essay collections attests to this; Uno y el universo (1945) and Hombres y engranajes (1951) are, for e x a m p l e , repertories of brief notes that cover a w i d e variety of issues: science, metaphysics, M a r x i s m , sex, religion, culture, language. . . M o r e organic and substantial, El escritor y sus fantasmas (1963) focuses on the practice of writing as an art and as a morale. M e a n w h i l e , Sábato's deep concern for the Argentinian reality and its popular culture is reflected in such b o o k s as La cultura en la encrucijada nacional (1973) and Tango. Discusión y clave (1963). A controversial and polemic thinker, Sábato has stressed the point that the writer must have persistence and the courage to remain faithful to his convictions, even w h e n they require the defense of uncomfortable positions. If Existentialism is the dominating influence in Sábato, then the A v a n t G a r d e (especially the surrealist spirit) is the decisive influence in C a r p e n tier. S o m e w h a t like L e z a m a (above), Carpentier felt the double attraction of history (particularly of the eighteenth century), on the one hand, and the aesthetic innovations propagated in Europe, on the other. H e w a s doubly seduced by the call of the primitive and the refinement of high culture, by the mysteries of G o t h i c landscapes and the criollo architecture of H a v a n a . His first essay is the massive and erudite stiady La música en Cuba (1946), fruit of his passion as a musicologist and of careful investigation of C u b a n archives and forgotten documents. T h e b o o k rescues a valuable artistic and anthropological heritage that w o u l d have otherwise been lost. Beyond this, and in spite of its highly specialized subject, it is an important text in Carpentier's literary evolution; writing the b o o k required learning the useful art of historical reconstruction (essential to his narrative w o r k ) as well as the Baroque prose that w o u l d be Carpentier's foremost contribution to Spanish A m e r i c a n novel. In Tientos y diferencias (1964), a collection of literary and cultural essays, Carpentier r e w o r k s a number of Sartre's ideas about novelistic contexts to conclude that "the legitimate style for the Spanish A m e r i c a n novelist is the b a r o q u e " (Carpentier, 1967, 38). La novela hispanoamericana en vísperas de un nuevo siglo y otros ensayos (1981) is a collection of diverse meditations on the novel, culture, music, and art. Carpentier's abundant w o r k as a cultural chronicler has been anthologized recently in several volumes: Letra y solfa (1975), Bajo el signo de la Cibeles (1979), and Este músico que llevo dentro (1980). Y e t the critical repercussions of all these texts together have not surpassed the o v e r w h e l m i n g impact of one singular essay: the prologue to his novel El reino de este mundo (1949), later revised under the title " D e lo real maravilloso a m e r i c a n o " and included in Tientos y diferencias. 409 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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Reread during the 1960s, in the context of the Spanish A m e r i c a n novelistic Boom, Carpentier's prologue w o u l d become at least as famous as the novel it accompanied; it unleashed endless commentaries, finally b e c o m ing a sort of aesthetic manifesto of the distinctively A m e r i c a n literary p h e n o m e n o n of " M a g i c a l R e a l i s m , " thereby marking the definitive rupture w i t h the European models that had dominated the literary arena until that time. Before analyzing this crucial text, several observations should be made. T o begin w i t h , the formula "realismo m a r a v i l l o s o " ["marvellous realism"] has clear antecedents: it is most directly associated w i t h the surrealist concept of the merveilleux, but in a critical w a y . T h e prologue documents Carpentier's disenchantment w i t h the fantastic imagery of Surrealism, w h i c h he attacks for both personal and aesthetic reasons. H e instead puts emphasis on the term " r e a l , " implying that w h a t is truly marvellous already exists in the A m e r i c a n reality, if only w e are able to contemplate it from a perspective that remains faithful to its essence and originality. Carpentier also ridicules the type of engage literature put in v o g u e by Existentialism; it is fairly evident that he w a n t s to propose an A m e r i c a n alternative not just to one, but to both of the great European philosophical-literary currents of the moment. Secondly, the term " M a g i cal R e a l i s m " with w h i c h the prologue has so often been connected, w a s employed for the first time by the avant-garde critic and photographer, Franz R o h (1890-1965) w h o in 1925 published his Nachexpressionismus — Magischer Realismus [German Art in the Twentieth Century] in Leipzig. Carpentier undoubtedly k n e w this text in its Spanish translation, pub lished in the June 1927 issue of Revista de Occidente, the literary journal directed by O r t e g a y Gasset. In contrast, Carpentier seems to have had no k n o w l e d g e of Borges's important essay " E l arte narrativo y la m a g i a , " w h i c h uses the expression in a different sense altogether, relating it to fantastic literature. In the third place, w h a t sparked Carpentier's interest in defining a n e w literary canon for the A m e r i c a n continent w a s the integration of these ideas w i t h those discussed by O s w a l d Spengler in The Decline of the West (1918; English translation, 1926). O n c e more it is w o r t h w h i l e to note the intervention of O r t e g a y Gasset, w h o s e publishing house translated Spengler's b o o k into Spanish as early as 1923; this w a s undoubtedly the edition that Carpentier k n e w . Carpentier's affirmation t h a t " the feeling of the marvellous presupposes a faith" (ibid., 7) is clearly based on Spengler, for w h o m the existence of a faith, perceived primarily as a religious element, is the criterion that distinguishes between a culture and a civilization. For Spengler, European civilization had abdicated its cultural reign as a result of its loss of faith; in its place, the primitive w o r l d emerged as the cradle of a n e w culture for modern man. It is within this context that Carpentier's attacks on Surrealism and on manifestations of 410 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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"the marvellous predicated on disbelief" {ibid., 8) must be considered. Despite the frequent misunderstandings the prologue has generated through the years as well as some of the debatable assumptions it contains, there is no doubt that the text is a captivating one: it is the meeting point of many ideas about art, culture and history, and it has engaged the best A m e r i c a n minds for almost half a century. Argentina's so-called "Sur g r o u p " w a s a brilliant assembly of writers and intellectuals congregated around the literary journal of the same name. Founded in 1 9 3 1 , it w a s , for more than thirty years, a focus of diffusion of the very best of universal culture, w i t h strong leanings t o w a r d w h a t came from Europe. Paradoxically, this Eurocentrism (a traditional feature in Argentinian letters) served as a pretext for the numerous attacks the group received from radical factions. It must be said that Sur w a s much more than a journal; it w a s , in effect, a selective library (not only because it w a s also a publishing house) in w h i c h several generations of Argentinian and Spanish A m e r i c a n s learned to read K a f k a , T . E. L a w rence, G r a h a m Greene, Virginia W o o l f , and A n d r é M a l r a u x , a m o n g others. Sur is the single, greatest contribution made by the enlightened Argentinian bourgeoisie in the twentieth century. F r o m this g r o u p , w h o s e central figure is Borges, several other names deserve mention. Victoria O c a m p o (1890-1979) not only founded the magazine and served as the group's spiritual leader of sorts, but also w r o t e a number of b o o k s in her o w n right; a m o n g them, her memoirs, published in ten volumes under the title Testimonios (193 5 - 1 9 7 7 ) , constitute an important chapter in Argentinian intellectual life. A n admirable narrator, José Bianco (1911—1986) served as the journal's chief editor for twentythree years, during w h i c h time he w r o t e and published numerous notes and essays. Ficción y realidad (1946-1976) (1977), for e x a m p l e , is a splendid collection of texts devoted to European and Spanish A m e r i c a n literary topics. T w o other authors w h o s e influence today is much less than in their o w n time are E d u a r d o M a l l e a (1903-1982) and H é c t o r A . M u r e n a (1923-1975). O t h e r Americanist thinkers of this period are of a more liberal intellectual and political bent than these t w o . T h e r e are a number of influential writers w h o participated in the development of cultural, historical, and literary movements of the time not only through their b o o k s , but also through their activities in the fields of politics, journalism, and public education. T h e C u b a n Jorge M a ñ a c h is remembered as one of the founders of Revista de Avance, an important periodical published from 1927 to 1930, as a biographer of José M a r t í {Martí, el apóstol [1933]), and as author of Indagación del choteo (1928), an original anthropological study about the festive and even scoffing attitude w i t h w h i c h C u b a n s respond to the pressures of daily life. M a ñ a c h ' s ideas can 411 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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perhaps best be c o m p a r e d to those of R a m o s and w i t h Paz's observations about the " p a c h u c o " in El laberinto de la soledad (above). T h e Ecuador ian Benjamín C a r r i ó n (i898-1976) w r o t e numerous essays, but none better than his captivating and memorable biography of his country's dictator, Garcia Moreno, el santo del patíbulo (1959). Since the 1920s, the Peruvian Luis A l b e r t o Sánchez (1900-1994) has been producing an abundant and varied w o r k as a literary critic and historiographer, university professor, journalist, politician, novelist, bio grapher, and ideologue. His prolonged association w i t h the A P R A party complicated his intellectual life w i t h exile and persecution, a factor that explains in part the seeming carelessness and hurriedness of some of his writings. His devotion to literature is w i t h o u t question; w h a t is question able are his judgment and, quite often, his taste. Nonetheless, Sanchez's La literatura peruana, a vast literary history that in its most recent edition of 1966 comprised five v o l u m e s , is an indispensable summary; in its sociocritical orientation, the w o r k m a y be read as a reaction against the ideas of R i v a - A g ü e r o (above). A t the time of its publication, América: novela sin novelistas (1933) caused significant stir, but its central thesis, stated in the title, w a s rapidly disproved. Sanchez's most solid and rigorous critical w o r k s are his various studies about G o n z á l e z Prada and, a b o v e all, his i960 intellectual biography of the Peruvian poet José Santos C h o c a n o , entitled Aladino o vida y obra de José Santos Chocano. T h e C o l o m b i a n G e r m á n Arciniegas (b. 1900) is c o m p a r a b l e to Sánchez in the thematic diversity of his w o r k and in his considerable public activity. Arciniegas is dominated, h o w e v e r , by a passion for the historical interpretation of A m e r i c a . In his b o o k s , history tends to be reconstructed in a very personal w a y , colored by a poetic flair and filtered through a hopeful o u t l o o k for the future. O v e r time, that optimistic faith led him to adopt cultural simplifications and s o m e w h a t conformist postures in the face of A m e r i c a ' s social problems. O f all his w o r k , Este pueblo de América (1945) captures the best of his thought and his prose. T w o prestigious Venezuelan essayists and public figures w h o represent other versions of liberal humanism in twentieth-century Spanish A m e r i c a are M a r i a n o Picón Salas (1901-1965) and A r t u r o Uslar Pietri (b. 1906). Picón Salas w a s an ambitious cultural historian {De la conquista a la independencia. Tres siglos de historia cultural hispanoamericana [1944]) and an impassioned Americanist (Europa-América. Preguntas a la esfinge de la cultura [1947]), w h o s e primary concern w a s for a harmonious relation between man and N a t u r e . H o w e v e r , his most significant and original contributions to the essayistic genre are to be found in the pages of the various b o o k s that comprise his intellectual autobiography, as, for e x a m p l e , Viaje al amanecer (1943) and Regreso de tres mundos (1959). Uslar is the author of novels, chronicles, and essays, a m o n g w h i c h Letras y 412 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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hombres de Venezuela (1948) and En busca del Nuevo Mundo (1969) stand out; the first for m a k i n g reference to the term " M a g i c a l R e a l i s m " before even Carpentier (above), and the second as a lucid summary of Uslar's Americanist vision. Hernán D i a z Arrieta (1891-1984), better k n o w n by his p s e u d o n y m " A l o n e , " and R i c a r d o L a t c h a m (1903-1965) are t w o Chileans w h o made considerable contributions to the development of literary studies in Chile and throughout Spanish A m e r i c a . Finally, the M e x i c a n E d m u n d o O ' G o r man (b. 1906) analyzed the past as a historian, but w i t h a philosopher's penetration and an artist's creative imagination. His best-known w o r k is the subtle and well-documented La invention de América (1958), but he also authored other important studies concerning the history of the C o n q u e s t and colonization. In the field of philosophy, the M e x i c a n L e o p o l d o Z e a (b. 1912) is, w i t h o u t doubt, the one w h o has posited the most profound questions and problems of contemporary philosophy and applied them to the realities of the A m e r i c a n continent. Influenced by the ideas of O r t e g a y Gasset and existentialist philosophy, Z e a conceives of thinking not merely as a speculative and abstract exercise, but as a reflection that takes into account sociohistorical circumstances and the moral responsibilities these impose on Spanish A m e r i c a n s . T h e subject of M e x i c a n i s m , and more broadly, A m e r i c a n i s m , is fundamental in his w o r k . His early texts are, primarily a critique of Positivism in M e x i c o and in Spanish A m e r i c a : El positivismo en México (1943), Apogeo y decadencia del positivismo en México (1944), and Dos etapas del pensamiento en Hispanoamérica: del romanticismo al positivismo (1949). Z e a ' s effort to understand the philosophy of a specific culture within the frame of its historical context does not constitute a resurgence of regionalist or even nationalist ideas; on the contrary, his philosophical Americanism is part of an ecumenical and providential vision that rescues - and unites - the Western humanist tradition and Eastern transcendentalism. It is precisely this sort of double rescue operation that occurs in América en la conciencia de Europa (1952) and América en la historia (1957). Z e a ' s ideas about A m e r i c a are interesting to c o m p a r e w i t h those posited by Carpentier in the prologue to El reino de este mundo; in both cases A m e r i c a is conceived as a n e w promised land that arises from the ashes of European civilization. For Z e a , w h e n the M e x i c a n thinks or creates, he does so, like men of any nationality, w i t h a universal vocation, as part of a great project that involves everyone. A n individual's respect for his o w n culture is in strict symmetry w i t h his recognition of the dignity of other cultures; mutual access to that w h i c h is one's o w n birthright and that w h i c h is patrimony of the other, redeems mankind from spiritual poverty and existential solitude. 413 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Z e a ' s other w o r k s , such as La cultura y el hombre de nuestros días (1959) and Latinoamérica en la formación de nuestro tiempo (1965), reflect even greater concern for the urgent problems of the m o m e n t as well as for defining the tasks of an empiric philosophy. T h e 1969 La filosofía americana como la filosofía sin más responds to a disquieting question posited by other philosophers, like the Argentinian Rizieri Frondizi (1910—1983) and the Peruvian A u g u s t o Salazar Bondy (1926-1974): does a Spanish A m e r i c a n philosophy truly exist? S o m e w h a t contentiously, Z e a suggests that the question is part of the problem, inasmuch as it presupposes the existence of a philosophy (European) that serves as model for all others. A t a midpoint between philosophy and history is the w o r k of another M e x i c a n thinker, Silvio Z a v a l a (b. 1909). Z a v a l a ' s countless contribu tions in the field of political history and his investigations concerning the predominating ideas in colonial A m e r i c a are indispensable reflections of h o w Spanish A m e r i c a ' s destiny w a s articulated alongside the universal historical movements of the 1940s and 1950s. In more recent years, the essayistic genre has undergone a radical transformation both in its form and in its cultural and social significance. O n one hand, the extraordinary g r o w t h of social sciences has p r o v o k e d a true revolution, that has not only opened previously unimagined fields of analysis, but that has also questioned the very activity of thought and the position of the thinker. O n the other hand, the influence of semiology, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, feminism, psychoanalytic criticism, and other n e w methodologies, with the breadth of topics they encompass - from language to the revision of cultural statutes to social psychiatry — has profoundly altered the genre's status. Literary essays and social investigations are no longer w h a t they once were. Nevertheless, the advances that have been achieved in the genre are not exempt from problems. T h e theorizing fervor of the last several decades has disseminated everywhere, creating a language - a metalanguage, according to its users that is nothing but a highly specialized technical jargon, inaccessible to the u n w a r y reader. A t the hands of the legions of disciples of Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Jakobson, A . J. G r e i m a s , Emile Benveniste, Julia Kristeva, Jacques L a c a n , and Jacques Derrida, the essay has become more am bitious and better informed, but at the same time more hermetic and intransitive, losing, in the process, one of the cardinal virtues of the genre: the free circulation of ideas. T h e scientific pretensions of these n e w essayistic models are not modest; they aspire to formulate a unifying theory of human language, that will serve equally well for the analysis of a p o e m , a journalistic article, or a political slogan. T h e search for a " n e w 414 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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objectivity" has produced w o r k s of unquestionable rigor and originality, but has also fallen into a scientific absolutism that tends to suffocate intellectual debates open to other concepts and principles. M e t h o d o l o g i cal precision is w i t h o u t doubt a w o r t h y aspiration, except w h e n used solely to prove the validity of the method, forgetting, in the process, the specificity of the object of study. Despite these limitations, it is undeniable that contemporary theories of literary criticism have p r o v o k e d more probing examinations of the phenomena characteristic of the last half of the twentieth century: the questioning of political ideologies, the vertiginous propagation of means of c o m m u n i c a t i o n , as well as the forms of production and diffusion of a vast popular culture according to c o m p l e x sets of rules. T h e s e questions plainly affect the place that literature is accorded in modern civilization. T h i s holds particularly true for the essay, inasmuch as it is a genre that cannot remain indifferent to the impact of such issues on the thought, imagination, and aspirations of millions. W h i l e most of the cultural messages that w e receive today are visual, they are not based on reading. W h a t are the repercussions of this on our image- and idea-generating processes? T h e answer is still elusive, at best. T h e essay, in response, has adopted - and adapted - new forms in order to incorporate this highly charged problematic and, moreover, in order to survive in a culture that tends more and more t o w a r d homogeneity. If the essayistic genre has, on the one hand, undergone tremendous formal changes in response to evolving modes of thought and perception, it has, on the other, reverted to its origins in its g r o w i n g a p p r o x i m a t i o n to journalism. T h e N o r t h A m e r i c a n so-called " n e w journalism," w h i c h represented the possibility of objective and at the same time personal reporting, found a healthy following a m o n g Spanish A m e r i c a n essayists, particularly in M e x i c o and Argentina, where important b o o k s of socio political investigative reporting have been published throughout the last several decades. In effect, the boundaries of the essay have become, if not completely erased, then certainly tenuous, resulting in the tremendous overlaps between essays and testimonials, documentaries, and chronicles. Previous attempts to write w h a t could be considered the all-encompassing essay have given w a y to a privileging of a certain aspect or level of reality that s o m e h o w gives sense to the rest. T h i s tendency t o w a r d specialization accounts, at least in part, for the relative paucity of essays focusing on Americanist themes during these years. Nevertheless, the expansion of editorial activity and the consequent increase in the production of b o o k s , magazines, and newspapers, has also served to stimulate the essay, particularly those concerning social or political issues. Curiously enough, Spanish A m e r i c a n literary studies (which during the 1960s enjoyed a " b o o m " parallel to the novel's) have significantly 4i5



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benefitted from the impetus provided by N o r t h A m e r i c a n academia, although it w a s traditionally France and G e r m a n y that were k n o w n as centers of Spanish literary investigation abroad. A marked interest in Hispanic literature started at the beginning of the century in the United States, attributable, in large part, to a g r o u p of distinguished Spanish professors, many of w h o m were disciples of R a m ó n M e n é n d e z Pidal (1869-1968); as a result, the focus w a s primarily on peninsular literature. A m o n g the pioneers of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture and literature in the United States, the most outstanding figure is, undoubtedly, Pedro Henriquez Ureña (above), w h o , from 1916 on, w a s professor at the University of M i n n e s o t a . After the Spanish Civil W a r , the diaspora of Spanish intellectuals w h o emigrated to the United States and occupied professorships in N o r t h A m e r i c a n universities - A m é r i c o C a s t r o (1885-1972), Pedro Salinas (1891—1951), Luis C e r n u d a (1902-1963), and Francisco A y a l a (b. 1908), to name just a few - further helped to p r o m o t e the diffusion of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature in the States. O n e expression of this renewed interest w a s the 1934 founding of Revista Hispánica Moderna by Federico de O n í s (1885-1966), co-directed after 1954 by A n g e l del R i o (1900-1962) and Eugenio Florit (b. 1903), as an organ of C o l u m b i a University's Hispanic Society. A n o t h e r manifestation of the increased attraction held by Spanish American* literature w a s the foundation in 1938 of the International Institute for Ibero-American Literature (Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana) and its publication, Revista Iberoamericana, at the University of Pittsburgh. T h e s e , then, are the bases that support the notable expansion in the study of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature in the United States, as a result of different historical and cultural circumstances. N o r t h A m e r i c a n universities have profited from the presence and w o r k of many Spanish A m e r i c a n s , primarily C u b a n s , Argentinians, Uruguayans, and Chileans, escaping dictatorships during the 1970s and seeking respite from the profound economic crises of the 1980s. A n unexpected consequence of all this is that new generations of Spanish A m e r i c a n critics and investigators have written some of their best w o r k in English, rekindling the question of w h a t criteria serve to frame a determined literary production: is it the author's nationality, the theme of his w o r k , or the language in w h i c h he writes? Finally, N o r t h A m e r i c a n schools of theory and criticism have served as a channel for the transmission of the new French - and A m e r i c a n - critical language to Spanish A m e r i c a n essayists. T h e brands of post-structuralist theories and Derridean deconstruction best k n o w n by Spanish A m e r i c a n writers are, for the most part, those interpreted and reformulated by the influential Y a l e school of criticism, w h o s e most prominent representatives are Paul de M a n and H a r o l d B l o o m (b. 1930). In the social sciences, Spanish A m e r i c a n essayists have also made use of ideas and models 416 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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proposed by N o r t h A m e r i c a n researchers - although quite often w i t h revisionist intentions. T h e list of professors w h o are also literary critics is a long one, spanning several generations and meriting, therefore, a b a c k w a r d s recapitulation. Before doing so, h o w e v e r , it is necessary to address the resurgent problem of generic boundaries, reincarnated in this case as the fine line dividing the essay, as such, from literary criticism. W h e n a w o r k of literary criticism goes beyond simple textual interpretation or erudite investigation, it becomes an essay. T h e difference is not merely one of the personal focus or implicit intention of the text in question, but moreover, of the intellectual and even social repercussions that it presents. T h e factors that imbue literary criticism w i t h essayistic qualities will be taken into consideration in the following selection of authors. It must be recognized, h o w e v e r , that the dividing line between essay and criticism is quite often tenuous at best. A l t h o u g h the so-called " f o u n d e r s " of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism belong to schools of interpretation that have for some time been outdated, their historic significance in creating the discipline is of great importance. T h e Chilean A r t u r o T o r r e s R i o s e c o ( 1 8 9 7 - 1 9 7 1 ) , the M e x i can Andrés Iduarte, and the H i s p a n o - C u b a n Eugenio Florit, a m o n g others, provided the documental and historical bases for the study of Spanish A m e r i c a n letters as well as the first critical approximations to this literature as a specific field of study. M o r e modern and currently more valid contributions to the discipline were made by the notable g r o u p of Argentinian scholars w h o arrived in the United States after having been trained in philology and stylistics by Henríquez Ureña and A m a d o A l o n s o (1896-1952). A m o n g the most prominent members of this g r o u p are: M a r í a R o s a Lida de M a l k i e l (1910-1962), w h o w o r k e d primarily in the fields of classic and nineteenth-century literatures; R a i m u n d o Lida (1908— 1979), author of Letras hispánicas (1958), a b o o k that ranges thematically from linguistic philosophy to readings of Borges; Enrique A n d e r s o n Imbert (b. 1910), w h o s e Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana (1961) and La originalidad de Rubén Darío (1967) continue to be read as indispensable reference w o r k s ; and A n a M a r i a Barrenechea, author of one of the first b o o k s about Borges as well as of Textos hispanoamericanos (1978), a collection of brief critical essays dating from 1953. T h e s e scholars, and others close to them in age, can be considered the forebears of those Spanish A m e r i c a n literary critics w h o s e w o r k is most widely read today. A l t h o u g h the majority are still active, t w o of the most important in the g r o u p have died recently: Emir R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l (1921-1987) and A n g e l R a m a (1926-1983), both U r u g u a y a n s . V e r y different and, to a certain extent, parallel figures, (both started careers in literary journalism in Uruguay, suffered the hardships of exile, and ended up as professors at Y a l e and the University of M a r y l a n d , respectively), 417 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l and R a m a developed their mature w o r k in a climate of constant debate. T h e rivalry between them exacerbated their differ ences in sensibilities, b a c k g r o u n d s , and personal convictions; that rivalry has extended - w i t h even greater bitterness - to their disciples. R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l w a s trained in England and w a s a great reader and admirer of A n g l o - S a x o n literature; R a m a , meanwhile, had an inclination for French literature. F r o m a critical perspective, R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l subscribed to the nouvelle critique, while R a m a w a s attracted to W a l t e r Benjamin (1892—1940) and G e r m a n social criticism. R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l repre sented a peculiar form of literary criticism that respected the specificity of the text, w i t h o u t ignoring biographic and psychoanalytic factors. R a m a , on the other hand, envisioned literature as one thread in a broader social and historical tapestry; as a g o o d social critic, he could not conceive of literature in any context that did not also m a k e r o o m for questions of ideology, political pressures, and the problematic, changing context of Spanish A m e r i c a . Finally, the styles of the t w o were extremely different. R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l ' s prose w a s elegant, ironic, and aesthetically pleas ing; R a m a ' s , by comparison, tended t o w a r d long, dry sentences and o v e r w r o u g h t conceptual density. G i v e n all this, it w a s only natural, then, that R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l and R a m a rivalled and polemicized as they did, quite often brilliantly. M u c h of their polemic w a s focused around the Spanish A m e r i c a n novelistic Boom and resulted in a revitalization and modernization of the critical instruments at hand for reading and understanding the new Spanish A m e r i c a n novel. W i t h o u t their h u m a n presence, R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l ' s and R a m a ' s b o o k s w o u l d perhaps represent something different from w h a t they d o , but there is no doubt that they are important contributions. A m o n g R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l ' s w o r k s , the following must be mentioned: Narra dores de esta América (1961; second expanded edition: v o l . 1,1969; v o l . 11, 1974), El viajero inmóvil. Introducción a Pablo Neruda (1966), El desterrado. Vida y obra de Horacio Quiroga (1968), El otro Andrés Bello (1969), Jorge Luis Borges. A Literary Biography (1978). R a m a ' s more important b o o k s are: Rubén Darío y el modernismo (1970), Los dicta dores latinoamericanos (1976), La novela latinoamericana. Panoramas 1920-1980 (1982), and La ciudad letrada (1984). T h e s e lists, h o w e v e r , tell only part of the story: the w o r k of both of these critics is also to be found in their innumerable articles in periodicals, reportings, and polemics, and especially, in the creation of journals (such as the decisive Mundo Nuevo, w h i c h R o d r í g u e z M o n e g a l directed from Paris between 1966 and 1968) and editorial projects (such as the important Biblioteca A y a c u c h o founded by R a m a in C a r a c a s , as testimony of his passion for Spanish America). T h e abundance of names that are active today in the field of academic 418 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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literary criticism a l l o w s the mention here of only a few. Some belong to the generation before that of R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l and R a m a , but the fruit of their many years in N o r t h A m e r i c a n universities continues through today. A m o n g them: the Chilean Eduardo Neale-Silva (b. 1905), diligent interpreter of the w o r k of César Vallejo (1892-1938); the C u b a n s José Juan A r r o m (b. 1910), w h o has devoted studies to the literary generations in the continent as well as to his o w n national culture, and José O l i v i o Jiménez (b. 1926), specialist in Modernismo and Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry. Immediately f o l l o w i n g this group chronologically are: Enrique P u p o - W a l k e r (b. 1933), also C u b a n and author of important w o r k s on colonial chronicles and letters; and the t w o Argentinians Jaime A l a z r a k i (b. 1934) and Sylvia M o l l o y (b. 1938), w h o have made substantial contributions to the study of Borges's w o r k . T h e younger academic critics are no less numerous. T w o of the most interesting are R o b e r t o G o n z á l e z Echevarría (b. 1943) and Enrico M a r i o Santi (b. 1949), both C u b a n s and both authors of extensive critical w o r k in English as well as Spanish. G o n z á l e z Echevarría, w h o has been influenced by the Y a l e school of theory, is the author of Alejo Carpentier. The Pilgrim at Home (1977), Isla a su vuelo fugitiva (1983), The Voice of the Master, and La ruta de Severo Sarduy (1987). Santi has published Pablo Neruda. The Poetics of Prophecy (1982) and Escritura y tradición, as well as a collection of O c t a v i o Paz's early critical w o r k {Primeras letras, 1988) and the critical edition of Paz's Libertad bajo palabra (1988). T h e Peruvian Julio O r t e g a (b. 1942) has written numerous w o r k s on Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry and the novel, paying especially close attention to Peruvian writers and culture. Puerto R i c a n and Antillean literature in general, and in particular, the w o r k of C i n t i o Vitier (b. 1921; b e l o w ) , o w e a great deal to A r c a d i o D í a z Q u i ñ o n e s , w h o s e valuable essays underscore the critical link connecting history and creation. T h e U r u g u a y a n Jorge Ruffinelli (b. 1943), exiled first in M e x i c o and currently in the United States, is a disciple of the brand of social criticism practiced by R a m a , a fact clearly reflected in his studies of U r u g u a y a n literature, M e x i c a n literature of the R e v o l u t i o n , and the poetry of N i c o l á s Guillen. A n unambiguous manifestation of Ruffinelli's socio-literary concerns is his Literatura e ideología: el primer Mariano Azuela, 1896-1918 (1982). A m o n g the academic literary critics doing w o r k in European universities, there are: the C o l o m b i a n Rafael Gutiérrez G i r a r d o t (b. 1928), trained in the G e r m a n philosophic and critical school, and author of Horas de estudio (1976) and Modernismo (1983); the Peruvian A m é r i c o Ferrari (b. 1929), w h o w r o t e El universo poético de César Vallejo (1974) and compiled a critical edition of the poet's w o r k ; and the Argentine Saul Y u r k i e v i c h (b. 1931), another w e l l - k n o w n critic of Vallejo and of Spanish A m e r i c a n poetry, in general. Educated in the M e x i c a n philological 419 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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school, A n t o n i o Alatorre (b. 1922) and José Pascual B u x ó (b. 1931) have both made solid contributions to Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism. Alatorre has w o r k e d primarily in the field of classical Hispanism and has most recently written p r o v o c a t i v e essays concerning the excesses of the new Formalism. B u x ó has specialized in colonial writings, and in problems of theory and poetics. Finally, Josefina Ludmer (b. 1939), writing in Argentina and n o w in the United States, has cultivated a psychoanalytic approach to literature, of w h i c h her Cien años de soledad: una interpretación (1972) is an excellent e x a m p l e . Beyond the margins of strictly academic circles, the best Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism of today is marked by the t w o virtues that O c t a v i o Paz identified as essential to the discipline: rigor and imagination. In its daringness, this brand of criticism can almost be defined as creative literature, something that is not surprising inasmuch as some of its leading practitioners are themselves important novelists or poets. C a r l o s Fuentes (b. 1928) has written literary criticism {La nueva novela hispanoamericana, 1969; Cervantes o la crítica de la lectura), reflections on current events {Tiempo mexicano, 1 9 7 1 ) , and a sort of autobiographic testimonial {Myself with Others). A l l these b o o k s are infused w i t h the same qualities that characterize Fuentes's creative w o r k : passionate intensity, a contagious enthusiasm for the ideas and the history of the present, and a sensuous, and even burlesque, language. García Márquez: historia de un decidió (1971), a critical essay by M a r i o V a r g a s Llosa (b. 1936) about García M á r q u e z , is impeccable as a study of an author's complete w o r k s (up to the time of its publication) and yet polemic for the theoretic foundations upon w h i c h it is constructed. La orgía perpetua [The Perpetual Orgy], perhaps V a r g a s L l o s a ' s best-known critical w o r k and fruit of his long-lived devotion to Madame Bovary, makes use of three different and contradictory approaches to the classic novel, in an unprecedented critical tour de force. Contra viento y marea (vol. 1, 1983; v o l . 11, 1986) compiles V a r g a s L l o s a ' s vast journalistic and critical production, providing, in the process, a synthesis of his literary and ideological evolution. T h i s collection unmasks the obsessions - the " d e m o n s " — that inhabit V a r g a s L l o s a ' s novelistic w o r l d at the same time that it confirms the lucidity of his critical thought and the sharpness of his polemic w i t as political c o m m e n t a t o r . G u i l l e r m o C a b r e r a Infante (b. 1929), on his part, is a master of the pun and of all types of linguistic games, as well as a renowned cinematic critic and essayist. His 1985 Holy Smoke is an extensive and unusual essay about the history of t o b a c c o inside and outside C u b a , w h i c h can be read as a comic or parodie variant of the classic Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940) by Fernando O r t i z (1881-1969). His recent Mea Cuba (1992) gathers a variety of notes on C u b a n history and culture. 420 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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A u g u s t o M o n t e r r o s o , G u a t e m a l a n by birth, but transplanted to M e x ico, writes in a prose style characterized by a flawless language, measured concision, and subtle humor. His essayistic w o r k s , particularly La palabra mágica, a collection of brilliant brief essays, and La letra e (1987), a sort of casual and fragmentary diary wherein he meditates on his metier, are as demonstrative of these qualities as are his delightful short stories. Severo Sarduy (1937-1993) has written almost all of his narrative and essayistic w o r k s while living in France, under the direct influence of the Tel Ouel g r o u p and of the most sophisticated structuralist theorists. His meditations on homoeroticism, Oriental philosophy, and occultist doc trines tend to be furiously o v e r w r o u g h t . His 1974 Barroco is a defense of the baroque aesthetic that is so central in C u b a n culture (one need only think of L e z a m a or Carpentier); that essay, together w i t h several others have been collected in the v o l u m e Ensayos generales sobre el barroco (1987). T h e prolific w o r k of M a r i o Benedetti (b. 1920) is situated at the opposite extreme: while it embraces all genres, from journalism to poetry, it is marked, particularly in the last several decades coinciding with his exile in C u b a and Spain, by a firm, ideological radicalism and the testimonial urgency of an intellectual directly engaged in the political struggle. T h e very titles of his essayistic and critical b o o k s attest to this: Letras de emergencia (1981), Crítica complice (1988). T h e most valuable of his w o r k s , such as El ejercicio del criterio (1981) containing Benedetti's w o r k s of literary criticism from 1950 to 1970, and Literatura uruguaya. Siglo X X (1963), are intelligent contributions to the essay genre, written in the straightforward, communicative style that characterizes their author. T w o essayists interested in poetic theory and formal analysis are the M e x i c a n T o m á s Segovia (b. 1927) w h o published Poética y profética ( M e x i c o , 1985) and the Bolivian R e n a t o Prada O r o p e z a (b. 1937), author of La autonomía literaria. Sistema y función (1976) and El lenguaje narrativo (1979). T h e r e is yet another g r o u p of essayists w h o share certain affinities: the practice of literary criticism or of art as the manifestation of a " m o d e r n " attitude characterized by an openness to contemporary literatures in numerous languages or to other forms of aesthetic expression (such as film) as well as by a receptiveness to various contemporary critical tendencies w i t h o u t falling into any methodological or ideological commitment. W i t h i n this g r o u p , three C o l o m b i a n writers, all associated w i t h the journal Eco, are notable. T h e dean of the threesome is Ernesto V o l k e n i n g (b. 1908), a G e r m a n born in A m b é r e s and established in B o g o t á since 1934. His vast European culture and his Hispanic A m e r i c a n intellectual experience are admirably reflected in his critical w o r k , collected in t w o volumes entitled Ensayos (1975, 1976). H e r n a n d o 421 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Valencia G o e l k e l (b. 1928) w a s founder of the journal Mito, w h i c h represents an important epoch in C o l o m b i a n literary life (1959-1962). H e is also the author of Crónicas de cine (1974) as well as of a splendid collection of brief essays and articles entitled El arte nuevo de hacer novelas (1982), about Russian, English, French, and N o r t h A m e r i c a n writers. T h e youngest o f the group is Juan G u s t a v o C o b o Borda (b. 1948), poet and editor of Eco from 1973 until its disappearance in 1984. C o b o Borda is a voracious and passionate reader w h o k n o w s h o w to transmit both his judgments and his enthusiasm for intellectual life in an agile prose and through precise and irreverent images. T h e title of one of his b o o k s says it all: La alegría de leer (1976). In La tradition de la pobreza C o b o Borda reviewed C o l o m b i a n literature w i t h a penetrating eye. In C u b a Cintio Vitier's contributions to national literature and identity are considerable; his vision integrates a mystic vein (he is an intellectual w i t h a Catholic foundation), an intimate understanding of the poetic phenome non, and historic concern, as can be seen in Crítica sucesiva and Ese sol del mundo moral (1975). T h e Venezuelan G u i l l e r m o Sucre (b. 1933) is a notable critic of Borges's poetry and author of La máscara, la transparencia (1975), a substantial repertory of twentieth-century Spanish A m e r i c a n lyric. A l t h o u g h Fran cisco Rivera (b. 1933), also Venezuelan, studied and w o r k e d in N o r t h A m e r i c a n universities from 1954 to 1963 and w a s heavily influenced by the nouvelle critique, his literary criticism is not academic in nature, but rather personal, and, w h a t is more, open to diverse approaches and methodologies. His essays have been collected in Inscripciones (1981) and La búsqueda sin fin (1993). A m o n g the M e x i c a n s , the critical and narrative w o r k s of Juan G a r c i a Ponce (b. 1932) stand out for the erotic suggestions, perverse imaginations, and moral strangeness that they e m b o d y , presented in a prose style that is as cold and deliberate as the stroke of a scalpel. His essays concern art subjects {Nueve pintores mexicanos (1968)) and writers w h o s e w o r l d s the author himself invades as a double, as, for e x a m p l e , in La errancia sin fin: Musil, Borges, Klossowski (1981). A n o t h e r M e x i c a n , José Emilio Pacheco (b. 1939) is a true homme de lettres w h o s e critical mind can be appreciated from almost any facet of his w o r k , particularly his poetry, w h i c h constitutes its center. Pacheco's critical w o r k s are dispersed a m o n g prologues, brief studies, reviews, anthologies, translations, and, a b o v e all, his intensive - and high quality production as a cultural chronicler. T h e Peruvian Julio R a m ó n R i b e y r o (1929-1994) has written a great many stories, but very few, though all insightful, essays. His only publication in the genre is the collection La caza sutil (1976). A n o t h e r Peruvian, but long-time resident of G e n e v a , is Luis L o a y z a (b. 1934), an elegant prose writer w h o s e w o r k is relatively u n k n o w n . L o a y z a ' s essays about Peruvian and European literatures 422 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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included in El sol de Lima (1974) are the offspring of a voracious and discriminating reader. Finally, the Puerto R i c a n R o s a r i o Ferre (b. 1942) is the author of a polemic b o o k of essays entitled Sitio a Eros (1980) that contains texts dedicated primarily to w o m e n ' s writings and feminist issues. M o r e important, h o w e v e r , than Ferre's theoretic positions w i t h respect to feminism, are the passion she puts into her ideas, the brilliance w i t h w h i c h she defends forms of expression that are free from erotic censorship, and the authenticity she champions as the primary force that moves literary creation. In the field of memoirs and diaries, none has been as widely read or as influential to the continental conscience as Diario del Che en Bolivia by Ernesto G u e v a r a (1928-1967), wherein the famous revolutionary d o c u ments his desperate adventure in the jungles of Bolivia, an adventure w h o s e failure led to his o w n death. T h e romanticism of the gesture (regardless of the absurdity of the enterprise), the improvised nature of its writing, and the poetic fervor of many of his notes, m a k e of this political document a text of literary interest, especially if c o m p a r e d to M a r t i ' s Diario de campana (1962). T h e intertwining of literature and politics can also be found in t w o b o o k s hailing from Chile. O n e is Confieso que he vivido [Memoirs] by Pablo N e r u d a (1904—1973), the memoirs of a great poet, a man of the w o r l d , and an active, militant intellectual. Polemic and juicy, contradictory and revealing, it is an indispensable text for k n o w i n g both the intimate N e r u d a and the mask he invented for himself in order to carry the weight of his o w n glory. T h e other is Persona non grata (1973) by Jorge E d w a r d s (b. 1931), a document of his double experience - as a diplomat and an intellectual - in H a v a n a , during the critical years leading up to the unfortunate "Padilla affaire," a typical confrontation between the interests of the revolutionary state and the artistic freedom of the writer. T h e ardent denouncement of N o r t h A m e r i c a n imperialism and the pathetic current situation of Spanish A m e r i c a n countries m o v e d the U r u g u a y a n E d u a r d o G a l e a n o (b. 1940) to write Las venas abiertas de America Latina. T h e text is a g o o d e x a m p l e of political reportage and c o m b a t literature, marked by a m o v i n g tone and a style of great precision and conviction. T h e attack on the central city as nucleus of the ills of a nation is a literary theme that in Hispanic A m e r i c a goes at least as far back as the writings of Bello, w h o in his p o e m " L a agricultura de la zona t o r r i d a " w r o t e of the " o c i o pestilente c i u d a d a n o " ["pestilent idleness of the c i t y " ] . In the nineteenth century, the accusation w a s repeated by G o n z a l e z Prada and in the twentieth by M a r t i n e z Estrada a m o n g others. It is into this tradition that the Peruvian Sebastian Salazar B o n d y (1924-1965) inscribed himself with his brief essay Lima la horrible. It contains an inclement attack against L i m a and its physical and moral horrors, written in a 42.3 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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sarcastic prose that tends t o w a r d the Baroque. T h e violence of the attack reflects the a m b i g u o u s l o v e - h a t e relation Salazar Bondy maintained w i t h his city as well as the intellectual crisis he w a s experiencing at the time of its writing. In his Buenos Aires: vida cotidiana y alienación (1964), Juan José Sebreli (b. 1930) made of that city the object of a sociological analysis w i t h M a r x i s t leanings, more valuable for its intuitions than for its methodological rigor. A militant M a r x i s t , the M e x i c a n José Revueltas (1914-1976) w r o t e abundant doctrinary and political w o r k s in addition to his novelistic w o r k ; the best of these are collected in the posthumous publication México 68: juventud y revolución (1978). R o b e r t o Fernández R e t a m a r (b.1930), w h o s e critical w o r k frequently represents the official position of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n on cultural issues, attempted a revision of the topics examined by Sarmiento and R o d ó : civilization versus barbarism, N o r t h A m e r i c a n utilitarianism versus Hispanic A m e r i c a n idealism. T h e author reverses the terms: the A m e r i c a n ideal is closer to the barbarous C a l i b a n than to the bourgeois elitism of Próspero. Fernández Retamar's proposal is interesting, but the uncritical use of M a r x i s t materialism hinders his intent, as does the aggressive tone with w h i c h he criticizes Spanish A m e r i c a n writers, judging them exclusively in terms of their degree of adherence to C u b a . T h e Chilean Ariel D o r f m a n (b. 1942), exiled in the United States, presents an even more acute case of intellectual radicalism, w h i c h infuses all his w o r k with a tone of M a r x i s t militancy and ideological indoctrination; his w o r k s include criticism of political and cultural colonialism, readings of forms of popular expression in his country, literary sociology, campaigns against dictatorships, etc. O f his various b o o k s of essays, a m o n g the most recent is the collection of critical w o r k s s o m e w h a t stridently entitled Hacia la liberación del lector latino americano (1984).


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Literary criticism in Spanish America Aníbal González

Literary criticism already has a long and distinguished history in Spanish A m e r i c a , one that encompasses such diverse figures as Andrés Bello ( 1 7 8 1 - 1 8 6 5 ) , José Enrique R o d ó ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 1 7 ) , Pedro Henríquez Ureña (1884-1946), A l f o n s o Reyes (1889-1959), Emir R o d r í g u e z M o n e g a l ( 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 8 5 ) , and Á n g e l R a m a (1926-1983). Nevertheless, Spanish A m e r i can literary criticism has sometimes had to contend w i t h feelings o f inadequacy, not only in comparison to its subject but also to the literary criticism of Europe and the United States. T h e inadequacy has often been real, of course, and Spanish A m e r i c a n critics have been the first to point out the deficiencies and vices of criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a , as well as the obstacles it has had to face. A m o n g the former, critics note its mimetic character, journalistic superficiality, lack of patience with serious scholarship, and ideological tendentiousness; a m o n g the latter are censorship, exile, and sheer lack of financial and institutional support. T h e absence of any book-length history of Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism is probably symptomatic of the unease Spanish A m e r i c a n critics and literary historians share with regard to this subject. Feelings of inadequacy and belatedness are nevertheless endemic to literary criticism wherever it occurs, h o w e v e r much critics may try to hide them beneath an authoritarian rhetoric. In modern literature, w h i c h has absorbed criticism into its make-up to a very high degree but w i t h o u t its institutional or ideological constraints, there is a l w a y s a propensity to surpass the exegetes. T h i s in turn has forced critics to compete w i t h creative writers in the elaboration of ever more probing theories of w h a t literature is and h o w it achieves its effects. Lately, poet-critics such as O c t a v i o Paz (b. 1914) and literary theorists such as R o b e r t o G o n z á l e z Echevarría (b. 1943) have remarked on the overall weakness of critical thinking in the Hispanic w o r l d and have suggested that profoundly critical thought - in the philosophic as well as in the literary sense - can best be found in the w o r k s of Spanish A m e r i c a ' s 425



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great poets and narrators rather than in those of scholars or academics. For these t w o commentators of the critical scene, Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism, while it has had its share of achievements, lags far behind poetry and narrative fiction in self-awareness, methodological rigor, and questioning ability. G o n z á l e z Echevarría has furthermore suggested that because, as a political and cultural entity, Spanish A m e r i c a is a creation of the modern age, its literature is thus already modern in themes and o u t l o o k - that is to say, it deals w i t h the typically modern topics of originality and historical development (The Voice of the Masters, 33-40). Unwilling or unable to recognize its "original modernity," h o w e v e r , Spanish A m e r i c a n literature has sought modernity as defined by other national literatures, and — if one accepts the identification of criticism w i t h modernity - this has led to a "critical r e d o u b l i n g , " or hypercriticism, in Spanish A m e r i c a n literature w i t h w h i c h ordinary academic or journalistic criticism, subject to ideolo gical, methodological, and institutional limitations, cannot hope to compete. T h e history of professional (that is, academic or journalistic) literary criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a is therefore a chronicle of delusions, misreadings, and outright falsification, w i t h a few bright areas in the realms of scholarship and literary history. Nevertheless, the history of criticism is essentially a history of ideas. Even erroneous ideas, if sufficiently widespread, can have an impact on real-world processes and must therefore be studied. T h e fictions and fantasies of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism differ from those of European and US literary criticism mainly in their greater emphasis on forging a coherent image of culture. Buffeted by violent social and political changes, and plagued by doubts about the viability of Spanish A m e r i c a ' s political independence, literary criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a has developed a vested interest in the creation and preservation of a solidly founded and broadly accepted notion of national culture. It is this cultural conservatism that undermines the critical impulse, since it defines an area that must remain untouched by critical thought. T h e tension between Spanish A m e r i c a n literature and its critics thus arises not only from an old-fashioned criticism straining to catch up with a highly experimental literature, but also from the conflict that arises from Spanish A m e r i c a n literature's insistent questioning of the concept of culture in w h i c h criticism has such a considerable stake. A t present, as G o n z á l e z Echeva rría has pointed out (The Voice of the Masters), the consensus about Spanish A m e r i c a n culture that w a s so important to critical discourse in the region has finally broken d o w n . H o w e v e r , until recently the history of literary criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a w a s closely linked w i t h the attempt to lay d o w n the foundations of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, with everything this implies in terms of critical blindness and delusion. 426


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W i t h i n this process of cultural instauration that is in part the history of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism, a series of broad stages or periods can be discerned: R o m a n t i c i s m [Romanticismo] (1810—1880s); M o d e r n i s m [Modernismo] (1880S-1920S); Tellurism ( 1 9 2 0 S - 1 9 6 0 S ) , and Postmodernity ( i 9 6 0 - ). T h e first covered much of the nineteenth century, from Independence to the 1880s. Representative critics of this period are A n d r e s Bello, D o m i n g o Faustino Sarmiento (1811—1888), D o m i n g o Del M o n t e (1804-1853), and Juan M a r i a Gutierrez (1809-1878; some of these writers were, of course, far more than critics of literature). T h e period is characterized by the importation of some elements of romantic philology, the beginnings of the search for cultural definition, and the invention of a Spanish A m e r i c a n literary history following the European model, one in w h i c h the colonial period t o o k the place of Europe's M i d d l e A g e s . Social and political concerns were also important at this stage, since criticism w a s seen at the time as an instrument in nation-building. T h e second period covered the turn of the century (from the 1880s to the 1920s), essentially coinciding w i t h the Spanish A m e r i c a n modernist movement. T h i s period abounded in important critical w o r k s , because it witnessed the systematic incorporation of the aims and methods of philology, of literary criticism (as it w a s embodied in the w o r k of French philologists and critics such as Charles A u g u s t i n Saint-Beuve, Ernest R e n a n , and H i p p o l y t e T a i n e ) , into Spanish A m e r i c a n literature; thus, many of the major Modernists, such as José M a r t i (1853-1895) and R u b e n D a r i o ( 1 8 6 7 - 1 9 1 6 ) , were also important critics. Furthermore, as many have argued, the modernist period is characterized by the increasing professionalization of the Spanish A m e r i c a n writers, and this w a s also the case for the critics. T h e first major professional literary critic in Spanish A m e r i c a w a s w i t h o u t a doubt José Enrique R o d o ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 1 7 ) . Other prominent critics of the time were Rufino Blanco F o m b o n a (1874-1944), Ventura G a r c i a C a l d e r ó n (1887-1960), Paul Groussac (1848-1929), Bald o m e r o Sanin C a n o ( 1 8 6 1 - 1 9 5 7 ) , and Enrique José V a r o n a (1849-1933). Salient characteristics of criticism in this period were: a tension between aestheticist and positivist approaches to literature, a concern with the relation between ethics and aesthetics, and a strengthening of academic as well as journalistic literary criticism. T h e third stage in the history of Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism, w h i c h may be called the telluric period, extended from the late 1920s to the 1960s. T h e term "telluric" refers to the renewed preoccupation w i t h social reform and national identity this criticism shared w i t h that of the R o m a n t i c s and w i t h the " n o v e l a s de la tierra." T h e most c o m m o n critical approach of this period w a s the production of broad accounts of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture's origin and evolution. T h e Telluric period produced numerous important professional critics, such as Pedro Henriquez Urefia, M a r i a n o 427



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Picon Salas (1901-1965), and Alfonso Reyes ( w h o , admittedly, w a s also a broad-ranging " m a n of letters"). It also witnessed the arrival in Spanish A m e r i c a of a plethora of major Spanish writers and intellectuals, exiled after Spain's Civil W a r ; a m o n g these were scholars and critics such as Federico de O n i s , A m a d o A l o n s o , and A m e r i c o C a s t r o . A greater academization of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism w a s also evidenced during these decades, w h i c h saw also the g r o w t h of academic Hispanism in the United States. T h e predominant critical m e t h o d o l o g y during this period w a s stylistics, the Hispanic equivalent of A n g l o - A m e r i c a n N e w Criticism. T h e importance of social commitment to this critical period is underscored by the appearance of the first important w o r k s of M a r x i s t criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a by critics such as José C a r l o s M a r i a t e g u i (1895-1930), Juan M a n n e l l o (1898-1977), and A n i b a l Ponce (1898-1938). A crisis in critical m e t h o d o l o g y w a s part of the change from the telluric to the current period. If " m o d e r n i t y , " both as a concept and as a historical period, is a byproduct of the Enlightenment and of R o m a n t i c i s m , then the current radical critique of the ideological legacy of these t w o moments of European civilization w o u l d have to be labeled " p o s t m o d e r n . " T h e rise of the Spanish A m e r i c a n " n e w n o v e l " during the 1960s (the so-called " B o o m " ) announced a serious questioning of the ideological underpin nings of Telluric criticism. Political events such as the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n gave n e w impetus to M a r x i s t and sociological approaches to cultural and literary studies. Simultaneously, new European critical methodologies such as Structuralism, semiotics, and Post-structuralism, began to arrive in Spanish A m e r i c a , and a debate ensued between these various m e t h o d o logies and M a r x i s t literary criticism. T h e critical consensus achieved during the telluric period w a s lost, and the current p a n o r a m a of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism is characterized by its diversity. Furthermore, the economic and social crises in Spanish A m e r i c a during the 1970s and 1980s have caused w a v e s of intellectuals from these countries to m o v e to the United States and Europe, eroding the cultural p a n o r a m a of their h o m e countries and widening the g a p , in quantity and quality, between the Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism produced in the United States and that produced in the Spanish A m e r i c a n countries themselves. W h i l e much of the best Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism (like a g o o d deal of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature) has a l w a y s been produced by exiles or expatriates, in the last decades frequent travel or emigration to wealthier countries w i t h richer, more stable academic environments has become almost a necessity for Spanish A m e r i c a n literary scholars. Frequently throughout the history of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature, the major writers of a given period have also been a m o n g its most important critics (as is the case w i t h Bello, M a r t i , and Reyes). H o w e v e r , it may be indicative of the recent crisis in criticism that crossover between creative 428



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writers and critics has been especially c o m m o n since the 1950s: the most influential critical figures during this period form a spectrum that encompasses criticism and creative writing in a fluid continuum, from writer-critics such as Jorge Luis Borges (1900-1986), O c t a v i o Paz, José L e z a m a L i m a ( 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 7 4 ) , and Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), to academic and journalistic critics such as A n g e l R a m a and Emir R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l , a m o n g others. Before w e begin to examine the periods outlined a b o v e in more detail, mention must be made of the incipient literary criticism found in the early gazettes, dailies, and journals of colonial Spanish A m e r i c a . T h i s is a poorly studied subject that still awaits serious scholarly research. T h e rise of regularly published journals or gazettes in Spanish A m e r i c a dates back to the eighteenth century and publications such as the Gaceta de Mexico (1728-1738) and the Gacetas de Literatura de México (1788-1795), edited by José A n t o n i o A l z a t e ( 1 7 2 9 - 1 7 9 9 ) , the Mercurio Peruano ( 1 7 9 1 - 1 7 9 5 ) , edited by H i p ó l i t o Unanue ( 1 7 5 5 - 1 8 3 3 ) , the Papel Periódico de La Habana (1790-1804), edited by D i e g o de la Barrera, T o m á s R o m a y , and José Agustín C a b a l l e r o , and the Diario de México ( 1 8 0 5 - 1 8 1 7 ) , edited by C a r l o s M a r í a Bustamante (1744-1848). T h e term "literature" w a s used rather loosely in those times, and much of w h a t w a s published under that heading in, for e x a m p l e , the Gacetas de Literatura de México, was actually information pertaining to natural history, agriculture, philos ophy, e c o n o m y , and "antiquities" (such as the M e x i c a n ruins of X o c h i calco). T h e Diario de México, M e x i c o ' s first true daily, did print poetry, essays on manners, and theatre reviews. T h e latter commented more on the performance than on the texts, and thus fall outside the scope of literary criticism. M u c h of the poetry published in the Diario de México w a s produced by members of the " A r c a d i a de M é x i c o , " one of the various "poetic a c a d e m i e s " that arose in Spanish A m e r i c a around the m i d - i j o o s in imitation of similar European institutions. In Spanish A m e r i c a , these academies served not only to establish standards of poetic taste, but also to disseminate Enlightenment ideas and to foment patriotic feelings (such w a s the case w i t h the " S o c i e d a d Patriótica y Literaria" in Buenos Aires and the " T e r t u l i a Eutrapélica" in B o g o t á ) . T h e scant criticism that appears in early Spanish A m e r i c a n periodicals is usually in the letters addressed to the editor by some of the readers. In these, comments on the poetry published in previous issues or discussion on matters of literary taste can be found. T h e s e comments are generally prescriptive, and attempt to follow the dictates of neoclassical poetics such as those of N i c h o l a s Boileau or Ignacio de L u z á n . Propriety, idealization, reasonableness, conformity to rules, and avoidance of latinisms or obscure w o r d s - indeed, an overt anti-Gongorism - are the 429 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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LITERATURE

literary values stressed in this criticism. O c c a s i o n a l l y , there are expres sions of an incipient literary regionalism, as w h e n M a n u e l del Socorro R o d r i g u e z ( 1 7 5 8 - 1 8 1 8 ) , in the Semanario de Nueva Granada, defends the poetry written in the V i c e r o y a l t y of N e w G r a n a d a from charges that it is inferior to that written in M e x i c o or Peru. A l t h o u g h much of this late eighteenth-century Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism - like the literature to w h i c h it responded - appears today excessively pedantic, constrained, and conservative, it w a s perceived quite differently at the time. Instead, it w a s seen as part of a broad movement of sociopolitical and cultural renewal launched by the Frenchinspired reformism of the Spanish monarch Charles III. M a n y of the stuffy neoclassical versifiers and critics w h o published in the Diario de México or the Papel Periódico de La Habana were y o u n g men, members of the creóle elite, w h o shared a g r o w i n g cosmopolitan attitude and a hunger for new ideas. It w a s from this g r o u p , in fact, that the founder of modern Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism arose: Andrés Bello, w h o before leaving for England in 1810 had already acquired a solid classical education at the university in C a r a c a s (where he had been an outstanding latinist), participated in the aristocratic salons of the Ustáriz and Bolivar families, and written for the Gaceta de Caracas. M o r e o v e r , he had conversed at length w i t h A l e x a n d e r v o n H u m b o l d t during the latter's visit to C a r a c a s in 1800, and had learned from him about the n e w ideas in linguistics, literature, and science generated by the European R o m a n t i c s . T h e romantic period of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism indeed begins w i t h Bello. Specialists on Bello have divided his life into three stages: the first comprises his birth and education in C a r a c a s ( 1 7 8 1 - 1 8 1 0 ) ; the second, his years of residence in L o n d o n (1810-1829); and the last and longest stage, his residence in Chile (1829-1865). M o s t of these specialists agree that his L o n d o n period w a s the most fruitful from the point of v i e w of research and publication; it w a s there that Bello w r o t e his studies o n Spanish medieval literature, his p o e m s " A l o c u c i ó n a la p o e s í a " (1823) and "Silva a la agricultura de la zona t ó r r i d a " (1826), and founded and directed the journals Biblioteca Americana (1823) and Repertorio Ameri cano (1826-1827). Bello lived and w o r k e d in L o n d o n as a diplomat representing the revolutionary junta of C a r a c a s . L o n d o n , the capital of European libera lism and of the w o r l d ' s most powerful empire at the time, w a s a rich repository of culture w h i c h Bello tapped to the fullest. In the British M u s e u m , he researched the origins of Spanish poetry in his studies on the Spanish epic, the Cantar del Mío Cid, and romance versification. D u r i n g his years in L o n d o n , Bello f o l l o w e d the polemics p r o v o k e d by the publication of L o r d B y r o n ' s Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812. H e read and commented on the w o r k s of R o b e r t Southey, Sir Walter Scott, and 430 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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James Fenimore C o o p e r ; he befriended the philosopher James M i l l and w o r k e d at collecting and organizing Jeremy Bentham's manuscripts; and he of course associated with the c o m m u n i t y of exiled Spanish liberals such as José M a r i a Blanco-White and José Joaquin de M o r a . O n the other hand, Bello's Chilean period is generally seen as less creative and more pedagogical. Unable to pursue many of his original researches, Bello t o o k on the role of teacher, founder of cultural institutions such as the C o l e g i o de Santiago, and journalist, in publications such as El Araucano. It w a s during this stage of his life, specifically in the year 1842, that Bello became involved in the famous polemic concerning R o m a n t i c i s m , w h i c h pitted him against Sarmiento. In a series of articles entitled collectively " resolves this duality by reconfiguring the individual in a collectivity that w o u l d not negate his o w n potentiality to both belong and be different. T h i s collectivity is not just the C h i c a n o community or the family recreated in p o e m s such as those in the section " H i s t o r y I must W a k e T o " (from Shaking Off the Dark), but also the community of writers w h o populate his poems and w h o s e voices Villanueva recalls sometimes through imitation, sometimes through intertextual allusions. Jorge Guillen (1893-1984), César Vallejo (1892-1938) (quite influential also for A n g e l a de H o y o s and other C h i c a n o poets), A n n e Sexton ( 1 9 2 8 1974), Pablo N e r u d a (1904-1973), W i l l i a m C a r l o s W i l l i a m s (1883-1963), and Federico G a r c í a L o r c a (1899-1936) are a m o n g the easily detectable presences in Villanueva's intertextual quilt. A similarly strong intertextual framework is found in Villanueva's autobiographical Crónica de mis años peores (1987), w h o s e title comes from a p o e m by J. M . C a b a l l e r o Bonald (b> 1926). In this, his latest b o o k , Villanueva insistently deals w i t h the poles o f language and silence, of past and present, in order to chronicle his o w n transition from being the inarticulate child of migrant w o r k e r s to becoming a poet w h o takes control of his o w n history and his o w n w o r d . H o w e v e r , the poet w h o epitomizes the changes in poetics during the 1970s is G a r y Soto (b. 1952), w h o s e influence and reputation in circles beyond the C h i c a n o have been continuously increasing. H e is the author of The Elements of San Joaquin (1977), and several other collections like The Tale of Sunlight (1978), Where Sparrows Work Hard (1981), Black Hair (1985), Who Will Know Us? (1990), and Home Course in Religion (1991). His is an imagistic poetry, centered - in his earlier w o r k s - in the recollection and observation of his barrio childhood and - lately - in a sort of metaphysical questioning of life triggered by everyday nimious incidents typical of a middle-class suburban existence. H e has also started a series of autobiographical recollections in prose that include Living Up the Street (1985) and Small Faces (1986). A s is the case w i t h Soto's, the poetry of A l b e r t o R í o s (b. 1952) (Whispering to Fool the Wind, 1982), Bernice Z a m o r a (Restless Serpents, 578 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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1976), and Lorna Dee Cervantes (b. 1954) {Emplumada, 1981) is centered on the imagistic recreation of reality, the exploration of the poets' o w n subjectivities, and the attempt to reach a wider and more diversified readership. T h e last t w o poets mentioned, besides, are in the forefront of a movement t o w a r d the engendering of the poetic subject that will become one of the major changes in the literature of the 1980s. T h i s first group of C h i c a n a poets also includes several w h o choose to write in Spanish, a m o n g them M a r g a r i t a C o t a - C á r d e n a s (b. 1941) {Noches Despertando InConciencias, 1977; Marchitas de mayo, 1989), Barbara Brinson-Pineda (1956, later Brinson-Curiel) {Nocturno, 1979; Speak to Me from Dreams, 1989), L u c h a C o r p i (b. 1945) {Palabras de mediodia/Noon Words, 1980; Variaciones sobre una tempestad/Variations on a Storm, 1990), G i n a Valdés {Puentes y fronteras, 1982; Comiendo lumbre/Eating Fire, 1986), and M i r i a m Bornstein (b. 1950) {Bajo cubierta, 1976). A s suggested by M a r t a E. Sánchez in her Contemporary Chicana Poetry, it could be said that all of them seem to find the need to negotiate their identities by s o m e h o w balancing their roles as C h i c a n a s , w o m e n , and writers. M o s t are highly conscious in their poems of the novelty of this latest role, and consistently explore h o w their being writers affects the perceptions that others have of them. In most cases, the poetry written by C h i c a n a s is characterized by a fine irony that subverts traditional attitudes t o w a r d w o m e n ; M a r g a r i t a C o t a Cárdenas or M i r i a m Bornstein could be representative of this trait. Some poets are also at the forefront of an expansion of the language of C h i c a n o poetry by venturing into the largely sidestepped vocabulary of eroticism and by a daring reclamation of their bodies and their sexualities; A n a Castillo (b. 1953) {Otro canto, 1977; The Invitation, 1979; Women Are Not Roses, 1984; My Father Was a Toltec, 1988), A l m a Villanueva (b. 1944) {Bloodroot, 1977; Mother, May If 1978; Life Span, 1985), and M a r i a Herrera-Sobek w o u l d probably be the best examples of this uninhibited poetry that shuns taboos and euphemisms. Some of these poets embark on a redefinition of terms and historico-mythological figures that radically re-evaluates traditions and social behavior: T i s b e , Penelope, A r i a d n a , Persephone n o w appear in poems by A l m a Villanueva, C o t a - C á r d e n a s or Brinson telling their stories from a female perspective; the figure of M a l i n t z i n / M a l i n c h e , in particular, is subject to a systematic revision after the very influential essay by A d e l a i d a R. del Castillo " M a l i n t z i n T e n é p a l : A Preliminary L o o k into a N e w Perspective" (1977). She n o w appears not as the raped mother of the mestizos, as frequently portrayed by M e x i c a n and C h i c a n o male authors; she is no longer " l a C h i n g a d a " - an object but rather a speaking subject w h o takes certain decisions concerning herself and, most importantly, a mediator - " l a l e n g u a " ["the translator"] - between cultures, as noted by N o r m a A l a r c ó n in her " T r a d d u t o r a , 579 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


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T r a d i t o r a : A Paradigmatic Figure of C h i c a n a F e m i n i s m " (1989). It will be impossible to even list the many essays, p o e m s , and prose w o r k s recently devoted to this figure, but a m o n g them the reader may consult p o e m s by L u c h a C o r p i (in Palabras de mediodia), A l m a Villanueva (in Santiago D a y d i - T o l s o n ' s Five Poets of Aztldn, 1985), and the essays by G l o r i a Anzaldiia (in BorderlandsI La Frontera, 1987). Poetry in the 1980s has f o l l o w e d almost as many paths as there have been poets. A m o n g the most innovative voices, together w i t h those already mentioned, w e should highlight Juan Felipe Herrera and Fran cisco X . A l a r c o n (b. 1954). Herrera w a s a major voice in the indigenist trend of the 1970s but, in the 1980s, he has created a type of experimental poetry that approaches the visual arts in his Exiles of Desire (1985), Facegames (1987), and Akrilica (1989), where cinema, graphic design, and painting become necessary points of reference. A l a r c o n , in turn, is rapidly becoming one of the most respected poets of the 1980s. H e is particularly praised for his short poems from Tattoos (1985), that are almost limited to the development of one single metaphor. In that sense, his poems inscribe themselves on paper like a tattoo w o u l d in s o m e b o d y ' s flesh. His most recent Cuerpo en llamas I Body in Flames (1990), combines that type of p o e m w i t h longer ones in w h i c h the erotic impulse encounters the political. In narrative, the abundance and quality of the prose written by Chicanas has been the most noticeable p h e n o m e n o n during the 1980s. O n e of the most successful writers is the C h i c a g o a n Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954), w h o s e The House on Mango Street (1984) w o n her an immediate reputation. In a sense, The House on Mango Street could be read as an engendered response to T o m a s Rivera's Tierra, as suggested by several critics. Y e t its importance goes beyond that point as it gives us a poetic rendering of social aspects previously almost unheard of in C h i c a n o letters. Cisneros has found a very personal style by appropriating the voice of a y o u n g C h i c a n a and f o l l o w i n g it to maturity. W i t h her second prose b o o k Woman Hollering Creek (1991), Cisneros has also joined a very small group of C h i c a n o authors — Cecile Pineda (b. 1942), A r t u r o Islas ( 1 9 3 8 1991) - that are n o w , once again, penetrating mainstream publication houses. A n a Castillo's t w o novels {The Mixquiahuala Letters, 1986, and Sapogonia, 1990) have also established her as one of the major voices of the most recent C h i c a n o narrative. The Mixquiahuala Letters is an epistolary novel, open (a la Cortazar) to a number of possible readings suggested by the author. It chronicles the travels (physical and imaginary) of t w o friends, a C h i c a n a and an A n g l o - A m e r i c a n w o m a n , as they embark upon a search for themselves, the perfect relationship, and a cultural 580 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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experience/encounter w i t h M e x i c o - the M o t h e r l a n d . Sapogonia, on the other hand, is a metaphor for the c o m m o n homeland of all mestizos, a sort of f o l l o w - u p on the idea of A z t l a n with a less nationalistic connotation, possibly due to the fact that Castillo grew up in C h i c a g o , a c o m m u n i t y where Latinos form a heterogeneous group that, to a certain degree, transcends the barriers of nationality. M u c h of The Ultraviolet Sky (1988) by A l m a Villanueva, one of several C h i c a n a poets w h o , recently, have begun to write novels, is devoted to exploring the painful process of establishing an independent self, free from the constraints of m o t h e r h o o d and marriage — but also free to choose w h e n and h o w to give birth to a n e w creature. A n o t h e r case in point w o u l d be that of L u c h a C o r p i w h o reconstructs in her Delia's Song (1989) the beginning of the C h i c a n o student protests in the Berkeley area, and the difficult position of Chicanas in that movement, being sometimes rele gated to secondary roles. O t h e r prose writers w h o have w o n praise from most critics are Denise C h a v e z - w h o is also a p l a y w r i g h t - and Helena M a r i a Viramontes (b. 1954), w h o distinguish themselves for their respect ive The Last of the Menu Girls (1986), a collection of short stories that read as a novel of the coming-of-age of their protagonist, and The Moths and Other Stories (1985), w h i c h constructs a rich gallery of female characters in a constant struggle for affirmation against social odds as well as their o w n mistakes. H o w e v e r , possibly, one of the most novel phenomena taking place in C h i c a n a literature in the 1980s is the creation of a n e w type of b o o k s that transcend the barriers of genre to construct deliberately hybrid texts; their hybridity, in turn, becomes metaphoric of the continuous " b o r d e r crossings" (as G l o r i a A n z a l d u a w o u l d put it) that contemporary C h i c a n a s effectuate; in particular, C h i c a n a lesbians. A t least t w o examples could be cited: those of Cherrie M o r a g a ' s Loving in the War Years (1983), and of A n z a l d u a ' s Borderlands I La frontera. Both b o o k s , although different from each other in many w a y s , switch more or less freely from narrative, to poetry, to essays, to autobiography, in an attempt to engage in the exploration of self and society from different discursive approaches. In both cases, furthermore, the generic experimentation a l l o w s for a revindi cation of the personal as political, and also, is a metaphor for their explicit lesbian sexual identity. A n z a l d u a and M o r a g a are also the editors of the most successful This Bridge Called My Back (1981, translated by A n a Castillo as Esta puente mi espalda and published, subsequently, in Latin A m e r i c a ) , w h i c h is in the forefront of efforts t o w a r d a w o m e n - o f - c o l o r feminism, a m o v e m e n t that claims that European and A n g l o - A m e r i c a n feminism has traditionally neglected the concerns of w o m e n of color, as well as their cultural differences. It also engages in a critical debate w i t h Latin A m e r i c a n feminism, since many in the movement feel an important 581



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difference in class identification separating them from feminists in Latin America. A l t h o u g h the prose fiction of C h i c a n a s has been predominantly an English-language phenomenon (with the exception of short stories pub lished in journals), there are at least t w o novels in Spanish that should be included in an essay like this. T h e first is Puppet (1984) by M a r g a r i t a C o t a Cárdenas. It is a p o l y p h o n y of languages, codes, dialects, media dis courses, and all kinds of voices that converge in that o f Petra L e y v a , the narrator. She is trying to elucidate the circumstances of a violent death w h i c h occurred in the community. In the process, she is also reconstruct ing her o w n personal and cultural history as a C h i c a n a and as a writer. T h e second text to be mentioned here is Paletitas de Guayaba (1991) by Erlinda Gonzáles-Berry (b. 1942), w h i c h also reconstructs critically the political, sexual, and social a w a k e n i n g of its protagonist as she travels south (to M e x i c o ) in a train. It is written in an ironic style that, at times, becomes a parody o f institutional discourses. T h e fact that the author has extensive training in linguistics is clearly noticeable in her ability to manipulate language to reflect social and regional particularities, as well as to expose hidden values associated w i t h certain w o r d s and attitudes. M o s t novels published by C h i c a n o s have also favored English in the 1980s. In English are written even novels like Rainbow's End (1988), by G e n a r o G o n z á l e z (b. 1949), w h i c h inserts itself in w h a t had been an almost Spanish-only tradition of satirizing the A m e r i c a n dream; a tradition that starts w i t h folkloric compositions such as " L a tierra de Jauja" or " E l corrido del l a v a p l a t o s " and continues in novels like Daniel Venegas's Las aventuras de don Chipote. A l s o written in English were A r t u r o Islas's t w o novels: The Rain God (1984), and Migrant Souls (1990). In the first, Islas chronicles the story of several generations of the A n g e l family through the reflections of M i g u e l C h i c o - w h o is a writer, and w h o sets out to uncover all the hidden stories, secrets, and lies that try to conceal the less o r t h o d o x aspects of his family's life. O f particular interest are Islas's beautiful descriptions of the desert's landscape, as well as the (pre-Hispanic) mythological support of his novel. Migrant Souls essentially continues the saga of the Angels, by further narrating their existence at the geographical and historical juncture of t w o countries and cultures. Both novels s h o w a k n o w l e d g e on Islas's part of contemporary Latin A m e r i c a n literature, from w h i c h he drew inspiration at times. T h e attention that C h i c a n o literature in general has received from 1970 to 1990 has been due, in part, to the efforts of a g r o w i n g number of critics and bibliographers, most of them C h i c a n o s , w h o have been able to apply the latest literary theories and critical approaches in their analysis. Scholars and critics have at hand n o w for the first time a series of useful 582 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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monographs w h i c h provide complete and up-to-date information regarding the nature of C h i c a n o literature. In 1979, t w o collections of essays appeared, that had a major impact on the development of C h i c a n o literary criticism: Modern Chicano Writers, edited by Joseph Sommers and T o m á s Ybarra-Frausto, and The Identification and Analysis of Chicano Literature, edited by Francisco Jiménez. D u r i n g the 1980s Juan BruceN o v o a collected fourteen interviews under the title Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview, followed in 1982 by his Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos. His study is mostly devoted to male authors, and w a s supplemented in 1985 by M a r t a E. Sanchez's Contemporary Chicana Poetry. T o the same genre is devoted Chicano Poetry: A Critical Introduction, by Cordelia Candelaria, a survey of major trends and features. T h e novel has been studied by Salvador R o d r i g u e z del Pino {La novela chicana escrita en español), w h o s e w o r k is limited to five novelists w h o write in Spanish, and by M a r v i n L e w i s , w h o in the same year published an Introduction to the Chicano Novel. M o r e recent studies on narrative include Contemporary Chicano Fiction: A Critical Survey, edited by V e r n o n E. Lattin, and Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference, by R a m ó n Saldivar, w h o utilizes a M a r x i s t approach, also influenced by deconstruction. T h e critics w h o have dedicated their attention to the theatre are Jorge Huerta {Chicano Theatre: Themes and Forms) and N i c o l á s Kanellos {Mexican American Theatre: Legacy and Reality and A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940). T h e r e are also several reference volumes, a m o n g them Chicano Literature, by Charles T a t u m , Chicano Literature: A Reference Guide, edited by Julio A . M a r t i n e z and Francisco A . L o m e l i , Understanding Chicano Literature, by C a r l R. and Paula W . Shirley, and Chicano Writers: First Series (1989), w h i c h is v o l u m e LXXXII of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and w a s edited by Francisco A . Lomeli and C a r l R. Shirley. Important bibliographies are those by Ernestina Eger (A Bibliography of Criticism of Contemporary Chicano Literature), R o b e r t o G . Trujillo and Andrés R o d r í g u e z {Literatura Chicana: Creative and Critical Writings Through 1984), and the Chicano Periodical Index, w h i c h n o w comprises five volumes, under the direction of Richard C h a b r á n . If w e w a n t e d to g o back to our initial questions, n o w that w e have summarized w h a t C h i c a n o literature has been like since its antecedents in colonial times, w e could suggest that C h i c a n o literature is, indeed, a distinct literature being constantly transformed by its position at the juncture of A n g l o - and Latin A m e r i c a . It will be impossible to claim that it belongs exclusively to any of those t w o traditions - as hard as it will be, for that matter, to conceive of any of them as absolutely fixed entities, or as national cultures in the narrowest sense. A possible w a y , thus, to 583



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approach this particular position of the literature written by C h i c a n o s w o u l d be to emphasize its transnational aspect, its being a borderlands culture in continuous reshaping, with continuous (physical and cultural) crossings from one side to the other. In fact, the perception of C h i c a n o literature as border literature has been widely used by scholars and writers, prompting all sorts of performances, publications, and confer ences on border aesthetics. Limiting ourselves n o w to the question of the relation of C h i c a n o literature with Latin A m e r i c a n literature, w e could say that they both share a s o m e w h a t similar past, characterized by colonization and mesti zaje. T h e y also share, to a certain degree, a similar oral tradition, w h i c h motivates certain similitudes in folklore and popular poetry; this is particularly true, of course, in the case of M e x i c o , and one should be careful w h e n extrapolating those affinities to the rest of Latin A m e r i c a , where different pre-Hispanic cultures have left a different heritage to present-day societies. W h a t has not been fully shared by Latin A m e r i c a and the Southwest of the United States is the impulse given to the arts and sciences by the process of independence of Latin A m e r i c a n nations. A s w e saw, w h a t is today the Southwest of the United States and California belonged to the independent republic of M e x i c o for a mere 27-year period. T h e formation of a national independent conscience w a s not a major catalyst of cultural change in the Southwest until later, w h e n it w a s conditioned - in the case of M e x i c a n s in the United States - by their resistance to the new colonial p o w e r . In fact, if one excludes the folklore where resistance and conflict have been continuous attitudes - nationa lism has not been a major factor influencing literary aesthetics until the late 1960s/ early 1970s, as w e saw. A l t h o u g h nationalism is still an option for many, in recent literature the trend seems to be to emphasize the plural heritage of C h i c a n o s and, w i t h it, their multiple options for national allegiance. F r o m a different point of view, contemporary C h i c a n o literature has as has almost any other literature in the w o r l d - received influences from the great United States' authors of the nineteenth and twentieth century, as well as from their Latin A m e r i c a n counterparts. Y e t these influences have seldom been direct, as often it is probably more a question of major changes in contemporary poetry or narrative that affect writers globally in a non-linear fashion. T h i s is particularly true of the oldest generation of writers, some of w h o m are largely self-taught (Miguel M é n d e z , for instance). For the youngest, those w h o hold degrees in Spanish are, obviously, more likely to possess expert k n o w l e d g e of Latin A m e r i c a n literature, as is the case with R o n Arias. W i t h this restriction in mind, it is still clear that both in Latin A m e r i c a and a m o n g C h i c a n o s similar issues have, at times, become major foci of 584


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reflection. W e have already pointed to some of them, but it may be w o r t h w h i l e to recall them n o w to close this essay. T h u s , as happened earlier in Latin A m e r i c a , much of the impulse in C h i c a n o theatre, prose, and poetry w a s aimed at establishing a literary and cultural identity. Some writers (such as R. A n a y a ) turned to the landscape and to native beliefs as the most autocthonous elements of the Southwest. Others, as R o d o l f o G o n z a l e s or R o l a n d o Hinojosa, turned to history (including oral history) from a C h i c a n o point of view. M a n y poets, following Alurista, set out to explore the C h i c a n o language that, for many, w a s meant to be a combination of English, Spanish, calo, and pre-Hispanic languages (mainly N a h u a t l , M a y a , and Y a q u i ) ; a new language that w o u l d account for a n e w national identity. W i t h Alurista and Luis V a l d e z as leaders, many sought the essence of Chicanismo in the indigenous antecedent, not unlike the Latin A m e r i c a n Indigenistas. In a sense, the processes of transculturation that A n g e l R a m a has so eloquently written about, have also been a key factor for many C h i c a n o writers w h o seek to render their traditionally oral culture into writing and print, at times in a language other than that historically used by their culture. Last, but not least, some social and literary events in Latin A m e r i c a have had a direct impact on C h i c a n o letters. W e have already mentioned the case of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , w h i c h brought large segments of the population - a m o n g them many intellectuals - to the United States, but that also produced an important novelistic movement that influenced some C h i c a n o writers. W e could also mention n o w the impact of the C u b a n Revolution of 1959, or the fact that many of the "neoindigenist" writers of the 1970s have been very active - particularly in the 1980s - in the movements of solidarity with Central A m e r i c a , thus creating a series of contacts that did not exist before. Alejandro M u r g u i a , José M o n t o y a , L u c h a C o r p i , Juan Felipe Herrera, and Francisco X . A l a r c ó n , are a m o n g the group that, in one w a y or another, engage in this socio-poetical dialogue w i t h other writers and militants from El Salvador, N i c a r a g u a , or G u a t e m a l a , whether they live in the United States or in their countries of origin. Links have a l w a y s existed to keep alive the communication between Latin A m e r i c a n and C h i c a n o literatures. Y e t those have not been of the cause-effect type, as some form of cultural dependency. T h e y have rather been connected to specific population movements (the last one being the influx of refugees from Central A m e r i c a and immigrants from all over Latin A m e r i c a experienced between 1970 and 1990), and to a broad dissemination of w o r k s by Latin A m e r i c a n writers in the United States, especially after the 1970s. In the case of M e x i c o , the contacts have also been kept alive thanks to the constant border crossings in one direction or the other, personal visits to M e x i c o by C h i c a n o writers, relatives w h o still live in that country, and cultural exchanges of international scope. 585


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T h i s constant communication, h o w e v e r , has not succeeded in consolidating the dissemination of C h i c a n o literature in Latin A m e r i c a . C h i c a n o authors have experienced difficulties in publishing in Latin A m e r i c a n countries, and, if one excludes Hinojosa's Klail City y sus alrededores (published by C a s a de las Americas in C u b a ) , there are no C h i c a n o b o o k s published in countries other than M e x i c o . M e x i c a n press Joaquin M o r t i z published the first t w o novels by Alejandro M o r a l e s in the 1970s and, in 1980, F o n d o de Cultura E c o n ó m i c a published T i n o Villanueva's Chicanos, an anthology of C h i c a n o literature in Spanish, later joined by O s c a r S o m o z a ' s Nueva narrativa chicana (Diogenes, 1983). In the late 1980s, the paucity of publications seems to have changed s o m e h o w , and w o r k s by M i g u e l M é n d e z M . have been published by Ediciones Era {Peregrinos de Aztlán, 1989, a reprint of the original 1974 edition) and by the Universidad de Guadalajara (El sueño de Santa Maria de las Piedras, 1986); R i c a r d o Aguilar (b. 1947) has published his stories Madreselvas en flor (Universidad V e r a c r u z a n a , 1987) and Amelia (Universidad A u t ó n o m a de C i u d a d Juárez, C o l e c c i ó n Premio José Fuentes M a r e s , 1990); Sergio Elizondo published Muerte en una estrella (Tinta N e g r a , 1984), a novel where the denouncing of social injustices (the killings of C h i c a n o youngsters) is embedded in a highly lyrical and symbolical narrative w i t h musical undertones, a feature also characteristic of Suruma (1990), his latest novel. Other authors have been published in journals (Fern devoted t w o issues to C h i c a n a artists), and one b o o k by G a r y Soto has appeared in translation (Como arbustos de niebla [Latitudes]). W h a t all this means is that C h i c a n o literature, and in particular that w h i c h is still written in Spanish, is consolidating its presence in M e x i c o ; hopefully this will mean that, in the near future, publications will also be available in other countries of Latin A m e r i c a .


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