Traditions and modernity

Within the tradition of modern Venezuelan poetry, Eugenio Montejo (1938-2008), nom de plume of Eugenio Hernández Álvarez, is a central figure. Recent years have witnessed an increasing recognition, both within and beyond the confines of his homeland, of his importance in Venezuela’s literary history, and have seen the rapid growth of his reputation as one of the most notable individual literary voices to emerge not just from Venezuela but from Latin America generally in the twentieth century. Such recognition culminated in his being awarded the Premio Internacional Octavio Paz de Poesía y Ensayo 2004. Despite this prominence, Montejo’s work has received little critical or academic appraisal, in particular outside of Venezuela itself. It is, in part, this relative dearth of scholarly study which led to the genesis of the present book, whose aim is to explore how Montejo responds both individually and poetically to (his) place and time. It represents, to my knowledge, the first book-length study in English of Montejo’s work and the first monograph in any language to offer a sustained thematic analysis of his entire output.

At the heart of Montejo’s significance as an individual Venezuelan literary figure lies his positioning within wider national and international poetic lineages, and in his profuse essayistic production and the many interviews that he gave during his lifetime, Montejo consistently underscored the importance of understanding the traditions within which one writes, traditions which play a determinant role in moulding the individual poetic voice. In Montejo’s case, this voice bears witness to a particular conjoining of national (as well as wider Latin American) and European poetic traditions, whose resonances are fundamental in determining both the style and the thematic concerns of the poet, and which are, hence, no less indispensable to our own appreciation of his writing.

Montejo’s place within Venezuela’s national tradition involves the recognition of two focal points in the poetic tradition of the country, both of which were discussed several times by Montejo: the generación del 18 and the generación del 58. The former comprises a group of Venezuelan intellectuals who lived their formative years under the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-35). Writing from 1918 onwards, they represent a transitional movement, breaking what Nelson Osorio T. terms ‘el estancamiento Modernista’ (1985: 123) and paving the way for the emergence of the Venezuelan avantgarde, otherwise known as the movimiento del 28, in which several members of the generación del 18 went on to participate.