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The Literary Social Symbol for an Interrelated Study of Mexico
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
The idea of a seminar that would contribute as much to the understanding of the country or area studied as to the individual disciplines participating is still one of those interesting projects that very rarely materialize. I can only provide knowledgeable discussion on the contribution that literary criticism can make to the larger objective of the study of Latin American society and culture. I am of the opinion that the insights of literary analysis can be very useful to my colleagues in the social sciences, but the adaptation of material from a discipline that is dealing with the imagination in its most elaborate expression, in the last analysis, must depend on each specialist's willingness to confront the subjective vision in man as a part of the human experience.
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- Copyright © University of Miami 1965
References
1 This essay was presented as part of an inter-disciplinary seminar under the auspices of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in Toronto in December 1964.
2 This novel has been rewritten several times by its author. In this paper I am referring to the original publication of 1934. Mr. R. F. Larson has recently written a carefully documented study of the changes brought about through the rewriting of the novel. The author has, in effect, destroyed his initial social stereotype. Larson's article is soon to be published in Revista Iberoamericana.
3 The influence of poets like Rubén Darío on the poetry of Spain is eloquent testimony of the high level of achievement. Also indicative of this development is the fact that the only Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to a Spanish American went to Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poetess. And today the poetry of Leopoldo Lugones, Pablo Neruda, and César Vallejo has deservedly received world recognition.
4 These general observations about the Spanish American novel have long been expressed by some of its leading critics; Alberto Zum Felde, El problema de la cultura americana (1942); Luis Alberto Sánchez made the classical statement which is the title of the book América, novela sin novelistas (1940), and in Nueva historia de la literatura americana (1949) he restated his earlier views with some qualifications: “Nature is still the most important protagonist of our novels; via the road of localism, by overcoming costumbrismo we are leaning toward the universal. The proof can be found in La Vorágine of Rivera, Don Segundo Sombra of Güiraldes, Jubiabá of Jorge Amado, Toa of Uribe Piedrahita, Doña Barbara of Gallegos, etc.” (p. 515); also, recently Joseph Sommers has studied the new orientation of the social symbol of the Indian in the Mexican novel: “Changing View of the Indian in Mexican Literature,” Hispania, XLVII, 1 (March, 1964); “El ciclo de Chiapas: nueva corriente literaria”, Cuadernos Americanos, 2 (Mexico, March-April, 1964); and “The Indian-Orientated Novel in Latin America: New Spirit, New Forms, New Scope,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, VI 2 (April 1964).
5 This sterile social symbol has been the common deficiency of all but the greatest writers who prescribe to the norm that literature must have a strong social meaning and a motivational purpose. Thus the contemporary writers of Spanish America face the compounded difficulties of overcoming a naturalistic dualism and the limitations imposed by the social thesis.
6 Besides the Mexican novelists treated in this paper one must consider Alejo Carpentier (Cuba), Vargas Llosa (Peru), Julio Cortázar and Sábato (Argentina), Garcia Márquez (Colombia), Donoso (Chile), Onetti, Martinez Moreno, and Benedetti (Uruguay).
7 Castellanos, Rosario, Oficio de tinieblas (México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1962)Google Scholar.
8 Pozas, Ricardo, Juan Pérez Jolote, 4th ed., (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1961)Google Scholar.