(30 years ago, communication was handled by a few. Today as well. )
In Argentina: Years of cultural fences (1984)
(...)
There are, of course, the trauma that follows every stroke, all wound. An exiled writer is first a woman or a man exiled is someone who knows him stripped of everything, often in a family and the best of a manner and pace of life, an air scent and color of the sky, a custom houses and streets and libraries and dogs and coffee with friends and newspapers and music and walking around the city. Exile is the cessation of contact of foliage and roots with an air and ground innate, it's like the abrupt ending of a love is like an unimaginably horrible death because death is still living consciously , something like Edgar Allan Poe as described in this story is called The Premature Burial. That
determined understandable trauma always tired and still is that a number of exiled writers enter into something like an intellectual twilight and limiting creative, totally impoverished and often destroys his work. It is sadly ironic to see that this case is more common in young writers in veterans, and that's where dictatorships are better achieved its purpose of destroying a building thought and a free and spirited. Over the years I've been off so many young stars in a sky abroad. And there is something even worse, and what we might call internal exile, as the oppression, censorship and fear in our country have been crushed on the spot many young talents, whose early works as promised. Between 55 and 70 I received many books and manuscripts of authors Argentine novel, which filled me with hope, now I know nothing about them, especially those still in Argentina. And it is not an inevitable process of selection and decanting generation, but a total or partial waiver covering a much larger number of writers that the expected in normal conditions.
also why it is sadly ironic that writers verify exiled abroad, both young and veterans, are shown in conjunction more fertile than those who cornered internal conditions and harassment, often to the disappearance or death, as in cases of Rodolfo Walsh and Haroldo Conti in Argentina. But in all forms of exile writing done within or after traumatic experiences that reflect the writer's production clearly in most cases.
Faced with this breakdown of vital supplies to neutralize or imbalances the creative, the reaction of the writer assumes different aspects. Among the exiles outside the country, a small minority in the silence falls, often forced by the need to readjust your life to the conditions and activities that the forced removal of literature as a crucial task. But almost all other exiles continue to write, and their reactions are detectable through their work. There are those who almost Proustian leave from exile to a nostalgic search of the lost homeland, there are those who dedicate their work to reclaim this country, integrating literary effort in the political struggle. In both cases, despite their radical differences, usually noticed a similarity: that of seeing a negative value in exile, in derogation, mutilation against which reacts in one way or another. Until today I was reading as many poems, short stories and novels of Latin American exiles in the condition that determines the specific condition that is the exile, the subject of an internal critique that aside as a negative value and a projected positive field. is almost always part of the negative (from the deploration to the cry of rebellion that may arise from it) and based on that evil is a negative value springboard attempt leap forward, the recovery of the lost, the defeat of the enemy and return to a homeland free of tyrants and torturers.
Personally, knowing that I'm on the dangerous edge of a paradox, do not think this attitude to the exile of the results that obtained from another perspective, seemingly irrational, but that answer, if you look closely, a actually making perfectly valid. Intellectuals who flee to believe that his act is positive, since it is intended to eliminate the opponent. What if the exiles chose also considered positive that exile? I'm not making a bad joke, because I know that I move into an area of \u200b\u200bopen wounds and crying irrestañables. But I work with a detachment expressed, based on those inner forces which have so often saved the man's annihilation, and are manifested among other ways through the sense of humor, the humor throughout the history of mankind has served to convey ideas and practice without it would seem madness or delirium. I think more than ever necessary to turn the negativity of the Exile, which confirms the triumph of the enemy-making a new reality, a reality based on values \u200b\u200band not disvalues, a fact that the specific work of the writer can return positive and effective, reversing the complete program of the adversary and coming out ahead in a way that he could not imagine.
I refer again to my personal experience: if my physical exile is in no way comparable to the writers expelled from their countries in recent years, since I left by choice and I adjusted my life to changing parameters Over more than two decades, but my recent cultural exile, who chopped off the bridge that joined me as my fellow readers and critics of my books, this unbearably bitter exile for someone who always wrote as an Argentine and loved the Argentine, it was not for me negative trauma. I left the hit with the feeling that now, now the die was truly cast, now had to be the battle to the end. Just think of all that is of cultural exile and alienation pauperizante for thousands and thousands of readers who are my countrymen as are so many other writers whose works are banned in the country, was enough to react positively to return to my typewriter and continue my work to support all smart ways to combat. And if I closed those cultural access to my country and think they have completed my exile, are wrong from medium to medium. I actually have a full-time scholarship, a scholarship to me more than ever devoted to my work, since my response to that cultural fascism is and will multiply my effort with everyone fighting for the liberation of my country. Of course I will not thank for a scholarship of this nature, but take advantage of fully, the negative value of the exile will worth fighting.
Needless to say I do not intend to extrapolate my personal reaction and pretend that all the exiled writer's share. I just think feasible to invest the poles of the stereotypical notion of exile, still keeping the romantic connotations that we should get rid of. The fact is there: we have expelled from our homeland. Why settle in his position and consider the expulsion as a disgrace that only negatively can determine our reactions? Why insist daily in articles and forums about our condition of exile, emphasized almost always in its most painful, which is precisely what we are seeking those who shut out of country? Exiles, yes. Point. Now there are other things to write and what to do, as exiled writers, of course, but with an emphasis on writers. Because our real power is in getting the most out of exile, those sinister taking full scholarships, open and enrich the mental horizon to converge again when what we do with greater clarity and greater range. The exile and sorrow go hand in hand, but with the other hand look for the humor: it will help neutralize the nostalgia and despair. Latin American dictatorships are not writers, but write, we do not become us in writing of bitterness, resentment or sadness. Let us be really free, and to start the label should beware commiserate and tear tends to appear too often. Against Self-pity is preferable to hold, crazy as it sounds, that the true exiles are the fascist regimes in our continent, exiled from the real social, social justice exiled, exiles joy, peace exiles. We are freer and more in our land are they. I have spoken of dementia she too, like humor, is a way to break the mold and open a positive way if we ever find not give in to the cold and sensible rules of the game the enemy. Polonius says in Hamlet: "There is method in his madness." Right because using the method succeeds in the end Hamlet insane; succeeds like a madman, but never a sane had thrown down the despotic system that stifles Denmark. Ofelia's life, warning and yours are the terrible price of this madness, but Hamlet kills the murderers of his father with the power based on terror and lies, with the board of his time. In this madness there is method, and for us an example. Inventing instead of accepting the labels we are stuck. Definámonos against predictability, against what is conventionally expected of us. (...)
Julio Cortázar.
Paper read at the symposium on "Latin American Literature Today" held at the International Centre Cerisy-la-Salle in 1978.
* is possible that the title was chosen by Cortázar but who publishes the book (posthumous), Saul Yurkievich. "Julio left us almost ready," he says in the post scriptum.
0 comments:
Post a Comment