Latin American Literature: From Neruda to Magical Realism
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was born in Parral on July 12, 1904. He was a Chilean poet, considered one of the largest and most influential of his century. The son of José Carmen Reyes Morales, a railroad worker, and Rosa Neftali Basoalto Opazo, Pablo Neruda died in Santiago at the Santa Maria Clinic on September 23rd.
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair was released in Santiago in 1924 by Editorial Nascimento. In this book, Neruda maintains a traditional structure (e.g., rhyme) and a tendency toward long verses. He kept modernist, romantic, and symbolist elements, but his originality shines through. It has 17 stanzas of Alexandrine verses (14 syllables) and uses assonance rhyme from the fourth stanza onward.
The theme of the poem is sadness due to lost love. The sea, expressed in the poem as the night, symbolizes mystery and spiritual death. The poem conveys loneliness, sadness, nostalgia, melancholy, and memories. These are romantic elements.
Juan Rulfo
Juan Rulfo was born in Jalisco, Mexico, on May 16, 1917. He was a writer, screenwriter, and photographer who belonged to the Generation of ’52. He lost his father at the age of six, and his mother died four years later. He lived with his grandmother in San Gabriel and then in an orphanage in Guadalajara.
Juan Rulfo was one of the great Latin American writers of the twentieth century. He belonged to the literary movement called “Magical Realism.” His works combine reality and fantasy, with the action taking place in the Americas. His characters represent and reflect the regional character of the place, with its socio-cultural issues intertwined with the fantastical world. He died in Mexico City on January 7, 1986.
His work El Llano en Llamas, published in 1953, is his first story collection. The title story is classified as symbolic and emblematic of Magical Realism.
Magical Realism
Magical Realism emerged in painting in the 1920s and was subsequently applied to twentieth-century Latin American literature. It blends the concepts of reality and fantasy.
Characteristics:
- Blending of the real and unreal
- Deformation of time and space
- Literature addressed to an intellectual minority
Characteristics of Rulfo’s Narrative
- Use of internal monologue
- Use of dialogue
- Simultaneous planes of reality
- Elimination of the author and narrator
- Omission of spectacular events
- Preference for evocation over description
- Use of popular language
The Latin American Narrative
The Latin American narrative underwent an evolution. In relation to other literary genres, it tried to critically reflect the Latin American reality.
Regionalism
Regionalism is the name given to the dominant trend in Latin American narrative of the 20th century. Its thematic axis is the relationship between man and nature, while also engaging with social and political processes.
Avant-Garde
In the 1930s, writers moved from social realism towards a universal projection, incorporating new techniques and languages from the avant-garde.
Characteristics:
- The omniscient narrator disappears
- Time is not treated chronologically; simultaneity of different times is employed
The New Narrative
These are works that present a radical change in both subject and form.
Characteristics:
- Breaks with linearity
- Abandonment of realistic scenarios for imaginary territories
- Use of symbolic elements
- Multiplicity of space
- Replaces the omniscient narrator with first or second person
Avant-Garde Movements
Avant-garde movements are present in contemporary life, rejecting traditions. A common feature is internationalism, which originated from the rejection of all traditions. They were all theoretical, typically outlining principles in manifestos, which ultimately guided the works produced by these movements.
Futurism
The first avant-garde movement. Led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1909), it was based on a love for the future and a horror of the past.
Goal: To transform values, achieving a new beauty that is not a set of rules, but an attitude towards life.
Expressionism
Born from two groups of painters: The Bridge and The Blue Rider. It becomes independent of reality and animates its material, making it intense and pathetic.
Objective: To obtain a maximum degree of expressiveness from things.
Dada
Founded by Tristan Tzara, it shared with Futurism a disdain for art, concluding that thought is overrated. It advocated for the removal of values (e.g., putting fabric on a canvas) and even denied all previous art without proposing anything concrete in return.
Surrealism
Carried the Romantic revolution to its ultimate consequences, with a growing contempt for traditional literature. In 1930, the 2nd Surrealist Manifesto appeared, with the phrase: “Surrealism in the service of the revolution.”
It proposes:
- An exploration of the psychic domain
- Automatism