Latin America and Surrealist Writing

Emir Rodríguez Monegal ³Tradition and Renewal² --->

3 violent breaks with the central traditional core:

1920: vanguard movements
1940: Cultural crisis (1st World War and Spanish Civil War)
1960: Cuban revolution

Each crisis breaks with tradition, proposes new values, excavates in the past to legitimize the revolt, to justify its descent.

1920:

* Updating of European ³isms² and liquidation of Modernismo.
* Technical experimentation (destruction of the verse and language itself).
* Playful nature of narrative

1940:

* Politically involved literature
* Polarization of existentialism Transcendent preoccupation for the destiny of the self, its insertion into the world. Question of language and form

1960:

* Literature involved with itself.
* The tradition of rupture is profoundly revolutionary = critical.

1940 REGIONAL AND UNIVERSAL DICHOTOMY

Tradition of the novel of the land or the country dweller --> ³deformed realism² (city vs. country) =|= universal = vanguard = change in form and essence.

SURREALISM

Basis of its outlook: paradox of all form and the absurdity of all human existence.
Salvation of art = plunging into the unconscious, pre-rational and chaotic.
Discovery of a ³second reality² different from (although fused with) empirical reality ---> we can only make "negative statements about it and to point to the gaps and cavities in our experience as evidence for its existence" (Hauser, Arnold. The Social History of Art, 231-135.)

Is this a surrealist work?

* Effect on the viewer or reader, aesthetic experience
* Irrational techniques.

Brief historical perspective:

The French School

1924 ---> 1st. Manifesto (Breton) Antecedent: Dadaism (Tristan Tzara) Dadaism rejects art and literature,denied all precursors, declares his own genesis.

Surrealism tries to transcend art and literature, establishes its antecedents, systematizes all ³isms² and aspires to be the last one.

Three objectives: 1) social redemption of human beings 2) complete moral liberation 3) intellectual renewal

* Dogmatic but in constant search of ³le merveilleux²
* Exploration of the unconscious and poetics of the dream to reach the absolute reality = surreality.
* Language = tool to render images, not rational but shocking

Surrealism in Latin America

Poetry

Antecedents ---> avant-garde (Creacionismo) of Vicente Huidobro and César Vallejo (Trilce, 1922).

Buenos Aires ---> Ultraísmo= exploration of pure poetry. Que (journal) 1928-30= point of departure of surrealism---> to erase all norms, to impose a new way of living and thinking and the absolute freedom of the individual self in order to reveal the essential truths hidden in the unconscious.

Chile---> center of surrealist activity: Grupo Mandrágora (Braulio Arenas): propose to study the great poetry cycles, the chivalry novels, the Elizabethan theatre, the Gothic novel, the German Romanticism and French symbolism, etc, and craft a new attitude to face the challenges of surrealism.

Mexico --> 1st. Avant-garde group estridentista (1923) 2nd group Contemporáneos (1928-1931) introduces surrealist ideas and techniques.

Prose

From the 30ıs avant-garde and surrealist techniques appear in prose.

* Surrealism is the natural evolution toward the universalization of the experience (more urban) and the abandonment of the regional, land-related narratives.

Two periods:

1935-1946: Introduction and experimentation

1946: Surrealism is an integral part of the general characteristics of Latin American narrative.

Maria Luisa Bombal (1910-1980)

"The writer must be able to revel and roll in the abundance of words; he must know not only the direct but also the secret power of a word. There are overtones and undertones to a word, and lateral echoes, too." (Knut Hamsum, 1888)

Ideological and aesthetic antecedents

* Knut Hamsun and Selma Lagerlöf ---> psychological exploration and unreal atmospheres
* Paris ---> vanguard and crisis of positivism (Locke vs. Kierkegaard).
* Einstein
* Freud
* Bergson and the existence of the subjective time
* Language can not communicate our experience of the world, our knowledge of things.
* Sur (Buenos Aires and Victoria Ocampo) and Virginia Woolf.

Characteristics of Bombalıs Narrative

* Exploration of the oneiric realm, poetic of dreams. (La última niebla).

* Mental action prevails over physical actions. Attempt to paint all facets of the unconscious.

Which role does memory play in Bombalıs fiction? Are there any connections between the exploration and representation of the unconscious realm in Bombal and the reflections on the movement of the mind and thought in Artaud?

* Sexual communication = only truthful communication.

* Women= instinctive and vital beings repressed by bourgeois society.

How do the surrealist principles become an alternative to silence for expressing womenıs desires and conflicts?

* Women= inner and ancestral attributes, essence link to the cosmic cycle =|= positivism and modern world.

In Bombalıs fictions, is it possible to conciliate the masculine and feminine perspectives of reality?

* Use of symbols and archetypes.

What reflects a universal, existential questions in Bombalıs fictions and what obeys to particularly feminine conflicts? How do those elements relate to each other and to the artistic and social context?

Sources:

Rodríguez Monegal. "Tradition and Renewal." Latin American in its Literature. Ed. Julio Ortega. London/New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980.

Galvez Lira, Gloria. María Luisa Bombal: Realidad y fantasía.

Guerra Cunningham, Lucía. La narrativa de María Luisa Bombal.

Langowski, Gerald J. El surrealismo en la ficción hispanoamericana. Madrid: gredos, 1982.