Henry Rivas Sucari
henryrivas2001@yahoo.es
In this paper, we provide an overview of two of literature the most representative novels of Mario Vargas Llosa: The Time of the Hero and Conversation in the Cathedral in order to explain the merit that the Swedish Academy awarded his literary career, " for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of individual resistance, revolt and defeat. " That is, try a nomination interpretative approach to the Academy gave the vargallosiana work by discussing concepts such as mapping, power, rebellion, etc..
The Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been, over many years, major controversies. Many did not receive extraordinary writers: Kafka, Joyce, Borges, among others. In recent years, this distinction were chosen, mostly falling within the various ideologies of the left. For many, this award was politicized.
Eleven of the authors awarded the match to the Spanish language: the Spanish José Echegaray (1904), Jacinto Benavente (1922), Juan Ramon Jimenez (1956), Barn Lane (1977) and Camilo Jose Cela (1989), the Chilean Gabriela Mistral (1945) and Pablo Neruda (1971), the Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias (1967), the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (1982), the Mexican Octavio Paz (1990) and Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa (2010).
The award to our writer has been explained by the Swedish Academy as follows: "On the mapping of structures of power and his trenchant images of individual resistance, revolt and defeat the individual." Next, try to explain the distinction. Of course, this is a personal proposal.
We begin with the question: what do we mean by mapping? And besides, by mapping referred to the literature. Cartography is the science that deals with the representation of the Earth on a plane which is called map. Mapping, according to the RAE, is the art of drawing maps, the science that studies them. In literature, this term is used in different ways to provide an overview of the production of a certain era or a certain place. By extension, also called mapping a set of documents related to land a particular field of study. Also for a possible geographical exploration, and at work "Literature and mapping: a possibility of scanning for historical geography 'of Oscar Buitrago Bermudez, with reference to the novel Maria by Jorge Isaacs.
In the case of awarding the prize to Vargas Llosa, mapping refers to the structures of power. One of the transversal axes in the narrative works of Vargas Llosa is the abuse of power. A first question to pose is, can the reader Literature combat the abuse of power?
To do this, we define this notion. According to the Dictionary of Sociology, Hugo de los Campos.
(...) As a mechanism, any definition of a situation whereby an individual or group can be imposed on another individual or group. As long relationship, any form of interaction in which the total participants may be imposed on each other over what others may be attached to each. The exercise of power (or the quota relational power) rests not only on the nature of his executor but also, largely, to a certain willingness on the part of its object. It has been argued as well that love and fear operate positively to the occurrence of power. But such states of mind in any case are sufficient, but not necessary, since the power can ultimately ignore those feelings.
Since time immemorial, philosophers have wondered about the fairness of the different forms of power, and the relationship that character styles saved with implementation. In 1976, in his book have to defend society, the French historian Michel Foucault missed by land centuries of philosophical speculation on the topic sentence: "Power is unjust, not so much because he has fallen on its highest examples, but because not ours. "
In 1977, the inaugural lecture of the Department of Linguistic Semiotics of the College de France, Roland Barthes attacks the language, showing it as a system that serves the power. "In the language, for the servility and power is inevitably confused. If you call freedom not only to the ability to circumvent the power, but also and above all not to submit to anyone, then there can be no freedom but outside of language. " (Barthes, 2007).
Freedom to concentrate against the power of language lies in another system for Barthes: literature is out of power because he is working in a job displacement of the tongue. As the literature is a sum of knowledge, there is a general theme that can fix or fetishize anyone. Each has a place knowing that makes it possible indirect dialogue with time.
In his book Discipline and Punish (2002), Michel Foucault discusses the different forms of punishment in relation to the exercise of power in every age. Modern punishment: the reform of the soul. With the advent of modernity, punishment ceases to apply on the body and its action is given on the soul. The aim is to modify the individual's soul, to reform the mind to be useful to society. This change in the form of punishment relates to a modification in the power structures. Exceeded the medieval absolutism, this new power is more ambiguous, leaving the figure of the king and becomes State, incorporeal, variable and less identifiable. Similarly, the penalty is modified and becomes hidden behind the walls of prisons and reformatories.
The exercise of abuse of power: Time of the Hero
In the novel The Time of the Hero, published in 1963 and winner of many international awards, Vargas Llosa is running a challenge to the ruling power represented by state institutions and society in the Leoncio Prado military academy. That, of course, is a reading that much of the critical resolved immediately. While we understand that literature is not the reality for his fictional character, we can find ways and traces of the ideology of the latter and some of its cultural events, presented mainly by a follower of the European realist tradition. The conscious or unconscious intention of the author is that of an authoritarian regime violentación this critically from the literature.
Mapping, to use the term as a unifying conceptualizándolo of Peruvian society, appears in the school. In this fictional parallel mirror, shows the faces of the whole country, of all races and backgrounds that make Peru. Young fresh from the saw, so different neighborhoods like Miraflores and Callao, among others, show how the conflict tension mapping of Peruvian society.
Mario Vargas Llosa has told his military experience in school Leoncio Prado in his memoir "Pez en el agua"(1993), describing, for example, who discovered Peru from sharing classrooms with young people so different from him in many ways, but which, however, occurred in the small meeting room, where resentment flowed all learned from their homes. The conflict of a race, social status or culture against another. This strain caused a tragic effect: violence.
On the other hand, criticism and castrating the abuse of power and double standards of society and institutions is reflected in how we act in the novel about the possible murder of a cadet. The maximum tension explodes with the complaint that commits the Jaguar and the solution by betting the school authorities. The cover-up motivated by the fear of scandal corresponds to the system. The militarism of that time hiding the crisis and hypocritical perversion of a conservative society.
The death of 'slave' to unveil Gamboa, one of the protagonists of history, the profound chaos engulfing the school: liquor, prohibited trade magazines, theft, etc.. Gamboa military represents the believer in the operation and effectiveness of the rules. Its small and stubborn struggle for the unveiling of truth and justice will cost you a humiliating transfer, as well as possible frustration in the rise of his career. Gamboa lives utopia of justice, rules of procedure, on the strength of the military institutions and crashes into reality. His achievement will be crushed by military power and conviction to defend this institution.
The curious case of Gamboa, his character represents the conviction of duty and ethics, despite being a product of voluntary submission to militarism.
The question on the exercise of power in a society in conflict: Conversation in the Cathedral
Another criticism of novels where the abuse of power is clearly designed, and criticism is exemplified in the novel Conversation in the Cathedral (1969). Here fable with a government of General Manuel Odria and his right hand, Cayo Bermudez (inspired Zañartu Esparza), which shows the huge machine that is capable of mounting a dictatorial government through media censorship, persecution and sabotage against every vestige of opposition that comes to combat totalitarianism.
The mapping shown in the novel also involves several territorial and social spaces of our country. Vargas Llosa's work in the realist novel exemplifies his devotion to "the complete novel." This is but a sum of different conceptions of overlapping realities, conflict and tensions between them. For this, the author uses, as in most of his novels, all artifice of narrative techniques learned from their European and American masters. Of the French realists like Balzac and especially Flaubert, learn the meticulous architecture and the search for the prose and the harmony of the implementation of the novel offers us an ideal of perfection. Joyce and Faulkner will provide technical possibilities for multiple, effective, vital, you know catalyze many views and perspectives, and the effect of a chorus of voices, the flashback and interior monologue. Vargas Llosa uses with great mastery of these tools. It also states that ...
The world of literature, the art world is the world of perfection. It is the world where beauty, which is what ultimately gives independence, truth, authenticity, confronts us with the finish, to the absolutely graspable with the knowledge, conscious vision also has a ball that never arrived to have. Then, when we returned from a great novel, that world of illusion, this mirage dazzling is that of a successful fiction imposed on us as an irresistible truth this world of ours, what is the natural reaction? The comparison is inevitable. And the conclusion of this comparison is that what this world is small compared with that world so big, so rich that just left. And that ugly, poor and sordid is this world compared to that world where everything is seen as beautiful, even the worst aspects of the human condition, the darkest manifestations, gloomy, cruel, what is man, had a charm that writer, creator had managed to impregnate, which we did acceptable, even exciting and so beautiful.
In the novel, Conversation in the Cathedral, is designed perfectly the archetypes of the characters: exploited, victims and supporters of those in power. They are displayed perfectly from a focus that gives us a greater subtlety, the description of the regime and the adjective that fits into the monster is a proof of it: Key Shit.
Literature, then, wants to break the stage to the social and aesthetic development, thus a more critical power. This raised the second question for the readers: literature must have a social purpose? The intellectual committed not only assumes a condition to its object of study or aesthetic, but also with all its reality. Curious for intellectual demeanor storyteller, creator of myths and fictions. This is a dilemma faced for centuries many of the creators, critics and totalitarian regimes.
One may notice, from these first reflections on two novels by Vargas Llosa, the role of criticism. In the sixties and seventies, whether the work depicts highlights the problems of their society and the writer assumes a political stance of the left, akin to the criticism, then score your work positively and in some cases extraordinary.
That same criticism insultingly when the writer moves from ideological and political conception. The ideological shift that saw Vargas Llosa is a clear example of how a certain critical first and then denigrándole enalteciéndole.
You can highlight two ideas about the writer Vargas Llosa compromised: the intellectual has the right to criticize the excesses of the systems and the writer has the right to elect their literary themes. These two novels: The Time of the Hero and Conversation in the Cathedral are ethical and moral issues, conflicts and tensions on the degradation of the individual in a society governed from authoritarianism, although not wake up in his characters a sense of action. Its resistance is implied, small, banal. That, perhaps, is the reflection of the country impossible Vargas Llosa was talking about in many interviews and debates.
Conclusion
Mario Vargas Llosa has tried throughout his work, provide the reader not only his own conception of art of the novel, but also of their political ideology, often marked by its particular criticism. This almost always has been referred to the abuse of power in societies in different eras and countries. The novel mechanism of sense as a reference on your cannibalization immediately directs the discussion about the power structures that govern them. Vargas Llosa's novel is collateral strategy. Not only channels his purpose to criticism of abuse of power by those who manage it from the ruling classes, but also from all walks of life to maintain a minimum possibility of discrimination, abuse and rebellion.
In the novel Time of the Hero , Vargas Llosa proposes a critique of the abuse of power from an institution that is a mirror of the system. Social structures help us to accept Foucault's thesis: we do not ask how to fight the power, but where is the power. In this case, the abuse is everywhere, in all structures of a violent society, racist, classist and conservative. Also practiced a formidable mapping the execution of this power. Mania realistic, inherited from the French masters, achieves this maniac fresh from the 50 Lima.
Conversation in The Cathedral is also repeated the same consideration about the power of Time of the Hero , but has also a greater ambition: the power of literature. This is referred to a more critical level, a violation of its aesthetic function to one of commitment, of rebellion, of questioning social and ideological proposal. Conversation in the Cathedral, and many writings of Vargas Llosa, is not a novel, but many novels, which arranged between communicating vessels trying to offer the idea of a complete novel. Then, this order can be set to preset the proposal of the Swedish Academy: "Mapping the structures of power and trenchant images of resistance, rebellion and defeat the individual."
One could infer the idea of the defeat of the individual, from the attitude of Santiago Zavala, his vision focused on frustrating the country's sad contemplation of a street in Lima: at what point is fucked Peru. Their rebellion will clash with the fate offered by social class, his marriage to a "huachafita" and the mediocre job as a journalist in a newspaper of Lima. "At what point is fucked Peru." This phrase will become, later, in a refrain repeated by toxic recited and many critics, journalists and writers on the fate looming disturbing our country. The committed intellectual, then, will have triumphed, as their critical thinking through the novel will serve to the question on the exercise of power in a conflict society.
On the other hand, many of the ideas proposed by Vargas Llosa may be controversial and debatable, but what is not is his pride expertise to build and unravel plausible fictions in his readers the enjoyment of reading and good literature. Thank you, Mario.
References
BARTHES, R.
2007 El placer del texto Lección inaugural. Madrid. Editorial SIGLO XXI.
DE LOS CAMPOS, Hugo
2007 Diccionario de Sociología. [En línea] Consulta: 12 de abril de 2010.
FOUCAULT, M.
1979 Microfísica del poder. Madrid: Piqueta.
FOUCAULT, M.
2002 Vigilar y castigar. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
FOUCAULT, M
2003 Hay que defender la sociedad. Madrid. Ediciones Akal.
VARGAS LLOSA, M.
1963 La ciudad y los perros. Barcelona: Seix Barral.
VARGAS LLOSA, M.
1967 Conversación en La Catedral. Seix Barral.
VARGAS LLOSA, M,
1993 El pez en el agua. Barcelona: Seix Barral.
VARGAS LLOSA, M.
2005 Conferencia: «Literatura y política: dos visiones del mundo». [En línea] Consulta: 11 de mayo de 2000. < http://sololiteratura.com/var/vargasconferencia.htm>
RESTREPO, D. (Compilador)
2007 Memorias para el primer Simposio Internacional Jorge Isaac El creador en todas sus facetas. Cali. Editorial: Universidad del Valle.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario