In the 1960s and 1970s, Latin American literary excellence emerged in large numbers, thus being called the "Big Bang of Latin American Literature", and a large number of Latin literary writers became popular in Europe and eventually became popular all over the world, many of which have withstood the test of time, such as "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "The Death of Artemio Cross", "The Long Talk of the Bar", "Hopscotch", "Filthy Night Bird" and so on. Names such as Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso, etc., are also widely known with these works.
Márquez and his wife. Rome in 1969. People's Vision Infographic
The Chilean writer José Donoso, known for "The Filthy Night Bird", as one of the main generals of the "literary explosion", in his memoir "Literary Explosion" Personal Experience", recorded the era when ideals and reality were intertwined, novelty and antiquity coexisted, and the three articles in the book recorded the background, causes and characteristics of the "literary explosion", and the writer also "literary explosion" ten years later in 1982, with the title of "ten years later", with a more mature attitude to review this literary phenomenon.
2022 is the 60th anniversary of the "literary explosion" in Latin America, from today's perspective, how to see this "literary explosion" that occurred sixty years ago? Recently, Fan Ye, a teacher and translator of the Department of Spanish-Portuguese-Italian Language at the School of Foreign Chinese of Peking University, shared a lecture entitled "'Explosion' and What It Created: From the 60 Years of 'Literary Explosion' in Latin America" held by the People's Literature Publishing House. The following is an excerpt from the lecture.
Cover of Jose Donoso's "Literary Explosion" Personal Experiences.
The time, place and people at which Latin American literature exploded
Latin America's "literary explosion" is not a marketing product worthy of the name, it does leave behind at least four or five world-class works that are immortal in the literary world.
There are some invaluable materials for talking about the "literary explosion" in Latin America, such as how to se Donoso's "Literary Explosion" personal experience, and the research book "From Márquez to Llosa: A Retrospective Literary Explosion" jointly written by two professors from the University of Granada in Spain. Based on these materials, we can mark Latin America's "literary explosion" with time, place, and characters.
The "literary explosion" began in 1962, and some people believe that it should be counted from 1961. In 1961, Borges and Becket were awarded the Formento Prize for Literature, an important literary prize in Spain. Some people believe that this represents the official entry of Latin American writers like Borges into the world literary scene, and then have an impact in Europe and the United States.
We prefer to think of 1962 as the beginning of a "literary explosion" in Latin America, because this year produced many classics, such as Llosa's "The City and the Dog", Fuentes's "The Death of Artemio Cross" and "Aura". Some literary critics were astonished because Fuentes wrote two works in the same year with completely different styles, lengths, and themes.
Cover of The City and the Dog.
In addition, in 1962, Chile held a congress of intellectuals, josé Donoso said that this congress began to talk about literature and culture, but in the second half of the year everyone was talking about political issues. The "literary explosion" in Latin America is closely related to the overall world pattern of the 1960s, and especially to the political and historical realities of Latin America, including some events in the course of the Cuban Revolution.
José Donoso has a wonderful personal observation, arguing that although some of the political issues raised by the General Assembly at that time were largely not implemented and realized later, from that time on, the concept of "we" was highlighted throughout his writing career. That is to say, after this, he did not only regard himself as a Chilean writer, but as a member of the "Our Americas", a Latin American writer or citizen belonging to the Third World.
When did the Latin American "literary explosion" end? In 2012, Llosa made it clear in his speech, "Not more than a decade." Some people put the end of the "literary explosion" to 1971. In 1971, the "Padya Incident" broke out in Cuba. Cuban poet Alberto Padía was arrested and imprisoned for his 1968 book of poems, Beyond the Game, and was not freed until after a public review. This event gave an entire generation of Latin American intellectuals a new view of the Cuban revolution, and several representatives of the Latin American "literary explosion" parted ways afterwards.
There are also claims that 1976 is the year of the end. In 1976, there was the famous "one slap" incident. Márquez had been going to the movie with his friends, and after the movie, Márquez stretched out his hands to his friend Llosa in anticipation of a hug, but Llosa walked over and slapped him. The next day, a photo of one of Márquez's swollen eyes made many newspaper front-page headlines. This event is also seen as the end of the "literary explosion". There are also those who are willing to examine this phenomenon over a longer period of time, and who cite Márquez's 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature as a "belated culmination", but it is also a satisfactory end that cannot be avoided.
Regarding the location of the "literary explosion", we want to focus on Barcelona.
Paris is also considered very important, Márquez once said that when "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was published, the whole world was his friend, but when he was in Paris, he was once reduced to picking up things in the garbage heap to eat. His generation of literary youth was very miserable in Paris, but it later became a kind of talking point.
Barcelona can replace Paris as the spiritual home of the new Latin American writers for many reasons, but thanks to two people, one is carlos Baral of the 50s, the publisher. Carlos Barral is one of the founders of the most important Baral publishing house in Spain today, and he founded the famous Spanish Concise Series Award, which was won by "The City and the Dog" and "Three Sorrowful Tigers". The other was Carmen Balsés, a legendary literary agent with an unparalleled literary sense of smell that was able to dig out Márquez and sign him. Carmen Balces once went to London alone and said to Llosa, OK, pack up your things and follow me, now go to Barcelona, you have no future here.
Group portraits of characters in the literary explosion
Which writers did the Latin American "literary explosion" include?
According to Jose Donoso, the spire of the pyramid has four digits. They are Julio Cortázar, García Márquez, Fuentes and Llosa. Some literary historians have also put on the list writers who are not generational or even politically different, including Borges, who did not become famous in the 1960s, such as Juan Rulfo, whose creative achievements were concentrated in the 1950s, and Márquez admired him so much that he could turn Rulfo's Pedro Paramo backwards.
Pedro Paramo book cover.
The Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Inventus repeatedly said that he did not belong to the group of "explosions", and he somewhat ironically referred to the core figures of the "literary explosions" as the Knights of the Round Table, considering it a relatively closed group, but in fact he had close correspondence or literary cooperation with everyone. There is also the Argentine writer Savoyto, whose Heroes and Graves are also the first sequence of "literary explosions" that came out in the 60s. Of course, we must not forget the Paraguayan writer Roa Bastos, whose later important masterpiece "I, the Supreme" is one of the masterpieces of the famous Latin American dictator novels.
How the "literary explosion" group writes humor
What method to use to talk about or approach the group of writers in the "literary explosion", I think of a more partial perspective - "humor".
Many of Cortázar's works are full of fun, and whether you agree with his political turn or not, you have to admit the irreplaceable and far-reaching interest in his works, such as The Guide to the Stairs. It is said that when Cortázar and his wife Aurora traveled in Italy, they went up a very strange staircase, curving and twisting like a spiral, and his wife said that the staircase was not used to go up, but to go down, which he said was a good statement, and used it as inspiration to write "A Guide to the Stairs".
He wrote: "You should generally face the stairs when going upstairs, as being sideways or with your back to the stairs will cause considerable discomfort. The normal practice is to take a standing posture with your arms naturally drooping and looking up, but don't look up too much so much that your eyes can't see the next step. Breathing needs to be gentle and regular. The staircase should begin by lifting the lower right part of the body, which is generally covered in leather and, except in a few cases, is the size of which coincides with the area of the steps. This part, for the sake of brevity, we call this part the foot, placed after the first step, lifting the corresponding part on the left, also called the foot, but not to be confused with the foot mentioned earlier. Lift it to the same height as the foot and continue to lift it until the knee is placed on the second step, where the foot is on the second step and the foot is on the first step. The first few steps are usually the most difficult, the situation will improve after familiarizing yourself with the necessary cooperation, and the duplicate name of the foot to the foot also makes it difficult to illustrate, please pay special attention not to lift the foot and the foot at the same time. ”
He defamiliarized what we are accustomed to in our daily lives and does not care at all. He wrote many similar "guides", such as the crying guide, according to the daily routine, these things are completely unnecessary, but he carefully wrote the guide, so that the reader can have a wonderfully dissociative effect when facing the real world.
Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" also has a lot of humor, such as the relatively minor character in "One Hundred Years of Solitude", an Italian piano technician, because the Buendia family ordered a piano, he came to maintain it, and the girls who later fell in love with the Buendia family stayed in Macondo. The book describes him as "a young man with blond hair, never seen in a man of Macondo so handsome and cultured, wearing a tight vest in such hot weather, and his pale fingers with knives and forks at lunch, to the astonishment of the girls." When he was later rejected by Aranda, he looked at his figure on a rainy night, and he wandered around the house with an umbrella, expecting to see a little light in Aranda's bedroom, his dress had never been as elaborate as it had been during that time, and his kingly solemn head showed a strange greatness. ”
Many of Márquez's mischievousness is hidden in the very ornate and solemn "One Hundred Years of Solitude", such as the blonde youth who used the name of an elderly Spanish peasant in the seventeenth century to name the old Spanish peasant in the seventeenth century when naming the people in the story.
The meaning of another name is also more intriguing, there is a general Moncada in the novel, Colonel Aureliano arrested General Moncada and shot him, when he executed his former friend General Moncada, he said you remember brother, not I want to shoot you, it is the revolution that wants to shoot you. But General Moncada said, "Maybe, but I'm not worried that you're going to shoot me, because after all, people like us are natural deaths." What I fear is that you hate the soldiers so much, fight with them for so long, think about them for so long, and eventually become like them, and no ideal in the world is worth the price of such a sinking. "It's a bit of a cliché, and we imagine that if the Colonel really wins, he really could go from a revolutionary to an authoritarian dictator, as General Moncada said.
Another of Márquez's works, Autumn of the Patriarch, is a sequel to another version of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and if the Colonel does not return home after defeat, if he wins and wins power, he is the dictator in Autumn of the Patriarch.
In Cuban history, on July 26, 1953, the famous "July 26 Movement" took place in Cuba: the young Castro led 124 young revolutionaries to attack the famous Moncada barracks, tried to get weapons to hold an armed uprising, and was later suppressed, Castro had a famous speech in court - "History will acquit me". Using the Moncada barracks incident as the general's name is a very intriguing detail.
Infant: "Three Sorrowful Tigers"
In addition to the four writers in the core group of the "literary explosion", there are also many writers who have been placed in the context of the "literary explosion" because of their literary creation and literary value, one of whom is the Cuban writer Infante.
His masterpiece, Three Sorrowful Tigers, was published in the same year as García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. In some contexts, we confuse latin American "literary explosions" with "magic realism" labels, and even have the wrong impression that these writers of "explosions" are more or less magic realism, which may be a bit of a crude wrong impression. Cortázar or Fuentes' works have little to do with magic realism, and even many of García Márquez's works have little to do with magic realism. What is particularly interesting is that "Three Sad Tigers" can also be said to have nothing to do with magic realism, and if the translation of "Three Sad Tigers" has a little meaning, it may also present another look of Latin American literature.
Cover of The Three Sorrowful Tigers.
I quote here a quote from Llosa, which he was talking about Invent. He said: "Humor is not just a pastime for Infant, as ordinary people are. We find the element of humor interesting, but always less important, always thinking that it is an additional or decorative thing, he said: "At least here in Infant is not a pastime like others, for him it is a challenge to the whole world, he can destroy the certainty of the existence of the existing world, and show the infinite possibilities hidden therein, in every joke, in every language game he is willing to make enemies of the whole world, always ready to lose all his friends, even his life, Humor is the way he writes, it's a very serious matter, it's all about his own success or failure interests, it's his way of resisting life, and he uses humor to dissipate the intrusions and frustrations of the day after day, turning it into a rhetorical illusion, a game, a mockery. ”
In the middle of Three Sorrowful Tigers, Infant parodies the same historical event and tells the same story seven times, some of whom represent a history of Cuban literature, including José Martí and Carpentier. All parodies must be exaggerated in some characteristics, such as when he parodies Jose Martí, he named the chapter "The Little Axe of the Rose", and he changed the "shoe" in José Martí's very warm and gorgeous children's poem "Rose Little Shoes" into "axe", why is it an axe? Because the murder weapon used by Trotsky's murderer was a mountain axe. He grafted the very important events of the twentieth century, and the very cruel, even somewhat absurd, events into it in the warm style of children's poetry, producing a very unique effect of black humor.
In infantico of these seven people, the most ironic effect is the parody of Carpentier, there is a paragraph in the article describing the Assassin to assassinate Trotsky, into his yard, the average writer will describe how nervous the Assassin is psychologically, but he deliberately exaggerates some of the characteristics of Carpentier's writing - Carpentier is an encyclopedic writer, he is very good at architecture, and is an expert in music, Infant exaggerated the naturalistic, encyclopedic, neo-Baroque writing in Carpentier's works, He wrote that the murderer entered Trotsky's house, but instead began to appreciate the various architectural styles of Trotsky's house with relish and inextricably, and he turned the very thrilling story into an encyclopedic, list-of-item list, and the effect of black humor was particularly obvious.
The rheology of the "literary explosion"
Several Latin American writers coined the term "Macondo," and they deliberately turned the world of Macondo created by Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude and other early works into Macondo. McCondo means a new variant of Macondo during the era of Apple Computers and McDonald's.
The new generation of writing is also very Latin, just as magical. It's just that our magic is different from the magic of the sages, our magic is a kind of magic of the era of globalization, in our magical real world, there is environmental pollution, there are highways, there are subways, there are cable TV, of course, McDonald's and Apple computers, and five-star hotels, skyscrapers. The Macondo generation expressed in the "McCondo Declaration" in 96: We have different realities in Latin America, and the writing of the McCondo generation is more of a city writing, rather than focusing on the countryside like "One Hundred Years of Solitude", and there are also many magical images, such as beautiful women wrapped in sheets, priests who can vacate five centimeters after drinking chocolate, And the McCondo generation believes that our reality may be the same reality as the reality of Spain, the United States or other parts of the world. We in Latin America should also have such voices coming out, and we can write like this.
Two years ago I met a Chilean poet at a poetry festival event who had a small book of poems called P.A.F., which is an onomatopoeia, such as something falling to the ground, or some impact. He chose this phonological word for his poetry collection, but he again explained in a serious way that P.A.F really meant pure family love. Because this book is written on a rare theme in Latin American poetry, it is about family feelings, about fathers, mothers, brothers, and it is a very humorous collection of poems.
If the new generation is called P.A.F,it is a self-named generation, the word P.A.F is their own, and it is an open, ambiguous, ambiguous word, always to be defined, just like latin American literature today you can hardly give it a fixed label to say what it is, it is always diverse, pluralistic, it may be a state that is always vague to be defined.
Finally, I would like to say that the "explosion" may be over, and perhaps the dust has settled in the eyes of some people, but the impact of the "explosion" is very diverse, because some people think it is a kind of follow-up, some people think it is a kind of subversion, some people think it is a kind of father or grandfather, although the "explosion" is over, but the echo of the "explosion" continues, and it is particularly worthy of our continued attention to the wonderful and pluralistic face of Latin American literature.