The Twentieth-Century Spanish American Novel

Six: Novelistic and Cultural Contexts of Latin American Modernism

Six Novelistic and Cultural Contexts of Latin American Modernism The avant-garde writers of the s and s had laid the groundwork for a modernist novel in Latin America in the s and s. Unfortunately, their work in fiction had little immediate impact on the Spanish American novel, and the more important forerunners for the rise of modernist fiction in Latin America were not writers like Torres Bodet and Huidobro, but rather Proust, Dos Passos, Kafka, and Faulkner, in addition to other foreign modernists. For novelists, wanting to be modern in this period tended to consist of the desire to be the Latin American Dos Passos or the Latin American Faulkner.The seminal Spanish American figure behind the rise of the modernist novel and the reaffirmation of the right of invention in Spanish America was the Argentine poet, essayist, and short fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges. In the case of the Latin American novel, during the s and s, the desire to be modern was played out primarily by employing the strategies of modernist fiction. In this period numerous cultural tensions surfaced, and writers such as the Mexicans Carlos Fuentes and Rosario Castellanos fictionalized attendant issues of cultural conflict, cultural difference, and hybridity. Borges’s promotion of avant-garde aesthetics in Latin America in the s and s, his innovative short fiction of the s in the form of Ficciones, and his translations of Faulkner into Spanish, among other contributions, made him a central figure for the rise of the modernist novel in Latin America. Of these contributions, his book Ficciones represented not only innovation just in terms of form, but a reaffirmation of the right of invention.1 Seemingly an obvious Tseng 2003.2.4 07:37 6754 Williams / THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPANISH AMERICAN NOVEL / sheet 103 of 280 90 The Rise of the Modernist Novel, 1941–1961 right for modernist novelists in Europe and the United States, pure invention had been under attack (and fallen into disrepute) from the traditionalists and criollistas. Given this background, Borges’s reaffirmation of the right of invention was a cultural revolution in itself. His volumes of short stories El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan () and Ficciones () suggested innovative, new paths for Latin American writers. The story ‘‘El milagro secreto’’ deals with time in ways that few Latin American writers other than those of vanguardia had dared to explore in fiction. These stories also contain meta- fictional qualities, a matter considered irrelevant by the traditionalists and nationalists. Subjective concepts of time and space are also common experiences for readers of Ficciones. The same had been the case for some of the avant-garde Latin American fiction writers of the s, but now the culture and the society seemed ready for such approaches to fiction and to reality. Huidobro had admonished poets in his ‘‘Arte Poética’’ to invent, and the Latin American and Caribbean writers two decades later were freely fulfilling Huidobro’s desire to be modern. Writing in French, Caribbean writer Aimé Césaire stressed the importance of invention, advocating ‘‘the drive to invent our own way and to rid it of ready-made models.’’2 Several of the major modernist writers of the s and s had direct contact with the European avant-garde. Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias and Cuban Alejo Carpentier had been well versed in European modernist literature since the s. Asturias traveled to Europe in , studying the Mayan collection at the British Museum and then Mayan mythology at the Sorbonne. During this stay in Europe, he also became acquainted with the most prominent French surrealists as well as with European avant-garde writing in general. The poet Robert Desnos had helped Carpentier escape political repression in Cuba and find exile in Paris. In Europe, Carpentier became deeply engaged in European and Latin American culture of the moment and participated in the literary circles of Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, and Paul Eluard. Some Latin American writers conceived of modernity as a challenge rather than a burden. In Brazil, the most prominent novelists of the s and s were social critics who also hewed to the aesthetics of modernism. Since the Semana de Arte Moderna in , Brazilian writers had been dedicated to the modernization of Brazilian fiction. One result of this process was the rise of four renowned novelists from the northeastern region of Brazil: Graciliano Ramos, Tseng 2003.2.4 07:37 6754 Williams / THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPANISH AMERICAN NOVEL...