Augusto Roa Bastos

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos (born June 13, 1917 in Asunción ; † April 26, 2005 ibid) is referred to as the greatest novelist in Paraguay and alongside Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa as one of the most important writers in South America.

Life

Roa Bastos was born the son of a very educated Portuguese mother, according to other sources a Guarani indigenous and a Brazilian bourgeois-authoritarian sugar refinery owner of French origin and spent his childhood in Iturbe, a small village in the department of Guairá . He later lived in Asunción , where he studied the literature of French classics and William Faulkner , supported by his father's uncle, the priest Hermenegildo Roa, with whom he lived in the capital. At the age of 15 he fled to take care of the sick. a. the wounded of the Chaco war against Bolivia . The brutalities that he saw here turned him against the violence forever.

Roa Bastos began as a bank clerk, plays to write. As a journalist for El País , the daily newspaper from Asunción, he made his first trips to Europe, especially to England. In 1944 he became a member of the group Vy'a Raity (Das Liebesnest in Guaraní ), together with Josefina Pla and Hérib Campos Cervera, decisive for the poetic and artistic renewal in the 1940s. Through the newspaper El País he gradually took sides with the oppressed during the civil war; In 1945 he spent a year in England at the invitation of the British Council . From there he went to France and sent his interviews, among others with General de Gaulle , and chronicles about the end of the Second World War from Paris . From there he went to the Allied War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg , from where he reported as a newspaper journalist.

Roa Bastos lived in exile in Buenos Aires , Argentina , between 1947 and 1976 . When the military dictatorship established itself in Argentina in 1976 , he accepted an invitation from the University of Toulouse to France , where he taught as a professor of Latin American literature and guaraní until 1989. In 1982, by order of the dictator Alfredo Stroessner, on the occasion of a visit to Paraguay, he was stripped of his citizenship, which he was only regained after Stroessner's fall. After the dictator was overthrown, he decided to return to his homeland.

Alongside Gabriel García Márquez , Roa Bastos is considered to be the most important representative of magical realism . He became known through the published 1974 novel Yo, el Supremo (I, the Almighty), probably the most important novel in Latin America, with dictatorship busy and high-handedness, in which he first of the figure of Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia inspire who ruled the country for 26 years in the 19th century. In 1960 he published Hijo de Hombre ( Son of Man). He has published countless other novels, realistic short stories, and expressive poetry .

In 1989 Roa Bastos received the Premio Cervantes (Cervantes Prize), the most important literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world.

After a fall in his apartment, emergency brain surgery was performed. He died of heart failure on April 26, 2005 , according to his doctor in Asunción .

bibliography

  • 1942 - El ruiseñor de la aurora, y otros poemas
  • 1947–1949 - El naranjal ardiente, nocturno paraguayo (The night of the driving fires)
  • 1953 - El trueno entre las hojas (Spanish: the night of driving fires; lit.: thunder between the leaves)
  • 1960 - Hijo de hombre ( Son of Man)
  • 1967 - Los pies sobre el agua
  • 1969 - Moriencia
  • 1972 - Cuerpo presente, y otros textos
  • 1974 - Yo, el Supremo (I, the Almighty)
  • 1974 - El pollito de fuego
  • 1974 - Los Congresos
  • 1976 - El somnámbulo
  • 1979 - Lucha hasta el alba
  • 1979 - Los Juegos
  • 1980 - Antología personal
  • 1984 - Contar un cuento, y otros relatos
  • 1989 - On Modern Latin American Fiction
  • 1992 - Vigilia del Almirante (The Night of the Admiral)
  • 1993 - El fiscal
  • 1994 - Contravida (Gegenlauf. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-518-40873-9 .)
  • 1996 - Madama Sui
  • 1996 - Metaforismos

Film adaptations

  • 1958: The green whip ( El trueno entre las hojas )
  • 1960: Doomed to Eternity ( Hijo de hombre )

literature

  • Adelfo L. Aldana: La cuentística de Augusto Roa Bastos. Montevideo: Ed. Géminis. 1975.
  • Carlos Battilana: Reflexiones sobre Hijo de hombre de Augusto Roa Bastos. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Long. 1979. ISBN 3-8204-6496-4
  • Adriana J. Bergero: El debate político. Modernidad, poder y disidencia en Yo el Supremo de Augusto Roa Bastos. New York et al. a .: Long. 1995. (= Wor (l) ds of change; 8) ISBN 0-8204-2583-4
  • Brent J. Carbajal: Historia ficticia y ficción histórica. Paraguay en la obra de Augusto Roa Bastos. Madrid: Ed. Pliegos. 1996. (= Pliegos de ensayo; 111) ISBN 84-88435-31-2
  • Rosalba Antúnez de Dendia: Augusto Roa Bastos. Una interpretación de su primera etapa narrativa. Bonn: Univ. Diss. 1983.
  • Carla Fernandes: Augusto Roa Bastos. Ecriture et oralité. Paris u. a .: L'Harmattan. 2001. ISBN 2-7475-0916-8
  • Petra Heider: The question of power in the dictatorial novels “Yo el supremo”, “El señor presidente” and “El recurso del método”. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Long. 1993. (= Hispanic Studies; 24) ISBN 3-631-46546-7
  • Guillermo L. Escobar Herran: La figura del dictador como tema literario. (Miguel Angel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Augusto Roa Bastos y Gabriel García Marquez). Bonn: Univ. Diss. 1978.
  • Manuel Miranda Sallorenzo: Heterogeneidad cultural latinoamericana y Nuerva Novela en la narrativa de José María Arguedas, Miguel Angel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Augusto Roa Bastos. Hamburg: Univ. Diss. 1986.
  • Ludwig Schrader (Ed.): Augusto Roa Bastos. Actas del Coloquio Franco-Alemán Duesseldorf, 1-3 de Junio ​​de 1982. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1984. (= supplements to Iberomania; 2) ISBN 3-484-52902-4
  • Carmen Luna Sellés: La narrativa breve de Augusto Roa Bastos. Alicante: Instituto de Culturo Juan Gil-Albert. 1993. ISBN 84-7784-069-5
  • Paco Tovar: Augusto Roa Bastos. Lleida: Pagès. 1993. (= El fil d'Ariadna; 14) ISBN 84-7935-124-1

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Roa Bastos, Augusto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Paraguayan writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Asunción , Paraguay
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 2005
Place of death Asunción , Paraguay