Ecuadorian literature
The Ecuadorian literature is the literature of Ecuador , located in 1830 by Great Colombia separated. It is therefore a part of Latin American culture. In the early days she has a lot in common with the literature of Colombia and Peru . She is less known abroad than this one.
Characteristic for the culture and literature of Ecuador were and still are a strong regionalism as well as the permanent conflict between the inhabitants of the coastal region ( Montuvio ), especially the port city of Guayaquil on the one hand, and the more conservative inhabitants of the central Andean region ( Sierra ) and the residents of the colonial and feudal highlands between the two mountain ranges, especially Quitos on the other. This difference is also reflected in the dialect between a rather informal idiom on the one hand and the conservative use of language in Quito, which is colored with Indian terms, on the other. In addition, Cuenca has recently stood out as a cultural center in the southern highlands. The black population in the Esmeraldas area continues to live by itself.
The beginnings up to independence: Baroque and Enlightenment
The first native chronicler is the educated Kazike Jacinto Collahuazo , who wrote a book about the history of the last Inca rulers in Quechua in the 17th century , which was publicly burned and for which he was imprisoned for life.
During the baroque era , the most important authors in the viceroyalty of Peru, unless they lived at the court in Lima , belonged to the clergy. In Quito it was u. a. the Jesuit poet Juan Bautista Aguirre (1725 - 1786) and the chronicler and author of historical, geographical and linguistic writings Juan de Velasco . One of the masterminds of independence was the doctor and philosopher Eugenio Espejo , the son of an Indian and a mulatto woman, whose treatises in dialogue form had initially been handwritten since 1779. He criticized the expulsion of the Jesuits as an intellectual bloodletting, advocated the philosophy of the Catholic Enlightenment and criticized the overloaded Baroque style of Gongorism . He was arrested several times and u. a. exiled to Bogotá , from where he exerted influence on the Colombian independence movement. The national literary prize was named after him.
The 19th century: neoclassical and romantic
José Joaquín de Olmedo , who had started as an anacreontist and was loyal to the Bourbons during the Napoleonic wars , switched sides and emerged as a writer, neoclassical poet ( Canto a Bolívar ) and historian of the independence struggle. He dressed "the new American self-confidence in impressive pictures". Later he was committed to the separation of Ecuador from Greater Colombia and was briefly president after the March Revolution of the Liberals of 1845.
For most of the 19th century, the intellectual life of Ecuador was oriented towards Europe. The romance began and ended here relatively late. The first representative was the poet Dolores Veintimilla de Galindo (1829–1857). The diplomat and journalist Numa Pompilio Llona (1832-1907) wrote highly acclaimed poems ( Odisea del alma , 2nd edition Havana 1877), some of which were also published in Europe ( Cantos Americanos , Paris 1865), but are largely forgotten today. Juan León Mera is considered the founder of a conservative-Christian romantic indigenism . His novel Cumandá (1871) deals with a conflicted love relationship between races in the Ecuadorian jungle. In the power struggles of the 1860s, the liberal democrat Juan Montalvo , who can be seen as the forerunner of modernism , took an opposite political position . His brilliant polemical essays were compared with those of Michel de Montaigne and were also known abroad.
The 20th century
Most of the 20th century up to 1979 was shaped by the presidency of the initially liberal and ultimately authoritarian populist José María Velasco Ibarra , the long-lasting economic crisis of the 1930s, subsequent coup attempts and conflicts with Peru. In this phase, the authors orientated themselves to foreign models - first to France, then to the USA; it ended with an upswing in literature during the oil boom of the 1970s.
1900-1929
Luis Alfredo Martínez (1869-1909) founded the genre of the realistic novel with A la Costa (1904), a description of social change, the harsh conflicts between conservatives and liberals, the contrasts between coastal and mountain regions as well as town and country and the social Identities. He also emerged as a painter, minister of education and agricultural expert, trying to preserve indigenous traditions.
Medardo Ángel Silva (1899–1920) belonged to the modernist poets of the early 20th century, the melancholy Generación decapitada ("beheaded" because its members died by suicide at a young age ) influenced by Rubén Darío , Baudelaire , Verlaine and others , Ernesto Noboa y Caamaño (1891–1927), Arturo Borja (1892–1912) and Humberto Fierro (1890–1927). The most important modernist novel in Ecuador ( Égloga Trágica , a story whose main characters indulge in fatalism) was written by the Ecuadorian diplomat and Foreign Minister Gonzalo Zaldumbide (1884–1965) between around 1910 and 1956; in the 1920s it was published in excerpts, in 1968 in its final form.
The main representative of the avant-garde Hugo Mayo (actually Miguel Augusto Egas Miranda, 1895–1988) called for a literary renewal early on, under the influence of French surrealism and Dadaism as well as the Spanish ultraísmo ; This tendency proved to be short-lived in Ecuador compared to other Latin American literatures. His first volume of poetry, Zaguán de Aluminio , was not published until 1982, decades after he had written the poems. Raúl Andrade Moscoso (1905–1983) was the editor of the short-lived avant-garde magazine Hélice in 1926 , which was founded by the painter Camilo Egas and which also felt committed to ultraism and indigenism .
Social Realism: The Generación del 30
In the wake of the Great Depression, the 1930s were marked by the modernists' departure from reality, social issues and a socially realistic style, one of which was the novel A la costa (1904) by Luis Alfredo Martínez (1869–1909). In 1930 three literary figures from Guayaquil ( Demetrio Aguilera Malta (1909-1981), who was also known as a playwright and through contemporary historical novels, and the militant communists Joaquín Gallegos Lara (1911-1947) and Enrique Gil Gilbert (1912-1973)) published the Volume of stories Los que se van about the living conditions of the people in Montuvio in dialectally colored language. These authors formed the core of the Grupo de Guayaquil , which also included the narrator José de la Cuadra and the novelist Alfredo Pareja Díezcanseco (also: Diez Canseco). Raúl Andrade also switched to a socially realistic style.
One of the most important Ecuadorian authors of this time is the novelist and theater director Jorge Icaza , the most important representative of indigenism (along with the Peruvian Ciro Alegría ) from the highlands and a member of the "generation of 1930". He uses many Quechua words as a stylistic device. His novel Huasipungo (1934) - that means front door, but became a synonym for the indigenous debt bondage and impoverishment of the latifundios - is considered a milestone in indigenist literature despite its formal deficiencies. The diplomat, poet and writer Adalberto Ortiz (1914-2003) from the province of Esmeraldas founded the literature of the Afro-Ecuadorians and mulattos with his novel Juyungo (1943; German: Juyungo 1960), the story of a black forest dweller and hunter living among mestizos. The socialist Ángel Felicísimo Rojas (1909–2003) continued the tradition of social realism in the 1940s ( El éxodo de Yangana , 1949). Alfredo Pareja Díez Canseco (1908–1993) dealt with historical topics in a realistic way .
The Generación del 30 away stood the lawyer and Socialist Pablo Palacio (1906-1947), a representative of the psychological realism of the 1920s and 1930s who made his narrow work in just two years. His protagonists are outsiders, he worked with avant-garde and extravagant stylistic devices that are reminiscent of James Joyce . His ironic, distant style stands out from the social realism of his time as well as from symbolism and avant-gardism.
The cultural politician Benjamín Carrión (1898–1979) wrote historical novels on topics from the Inca period. He began his career as a romantic, influenced modernimso bv poet and later worked as a magazine editor and cultural functionary. The magical realism took José de la Cuadra (1903-1941), published in his 1934 book Los Sangurimas anticipated. Adalberto Ortiz (1914-1003) founded the literature of Afro-Ecuadorians and mulattos. The cultural politician Benjamín Carrión (1898-1979) wrote historical novels on Theman from the Inca period. The socially critical works of Humberto Salvador (1909–1982) are influenced by Marxism, psychoanalysis and the work of Thomas Mann .
After 1945
After World War II, the influence of US literature grew in Ecuador. The socialist diplomat Jorge Carrera Andrade is counted among the internationally outstanding poets of Latin America , who represented his country in 10 countries one after the other. Influenced by American authors, he also wrote in English and French. US authors such as William Jay Smith and William Carlos Williams valued his works, which have been translated into many languages, some of them into German. Horacio Hidrovo Velásquez (1902-1962) became known as a narrator through the novel Un Hombre y un Río (1957). Nelson Estupiñán Bass (1912–2002), who was close to the communists, described the problems and struggles of the marginalized Afro-Ecuadorian inhabitants of the Esmeraldas province in his socially realistic and historical novels. The reading of Marx and Freud shaped the poetry of Jorge Enrique Adoum . Ileana Espinel has also appeared as a poet since the 1950s .
In the 1960s and 1970s, the center of intellectual life shifted back to Quito, where various groups of writers worked in talleres literarios (writing workshops) to further develop the short story. This time, in which an oil boom set in, which was accompanied by a sharp increase in corruption, proved to be extraordinarily fruitful from a literary point of view, not only because of the discovery of new topics. The magazine La bufanda del sol was published in 1972 and provided important impulses for the Ecuadorian cultural life, in 1978 the first writers' congress met and in 1979 Gustavo Alfredo Jácome (1912-2018) published his important novel Por qué se fueron las garzas .
Since 1980
Raúl Pérez Torres (* 1941) deals with erotic topics in sensualistic language; he has also edited various anthologies. One of the most prolific contemporary writers is Javier Vásconez . Science fiction novels are written by Santiago Páez . The more recent books by Iván Égüez (* 1944) also take place in fantastic worlds. The narrator Leonardo Valencia (* 1969) heads the creative writing workshop at the University of Barcelona and publishes anthologies. The best-known author in Ecuador at the moment is Gabriela Alemán with her stories and novels, which are difficult to classify, in which she deals with current political issues in thriller style.
Relatively few works of Ecuadorian literature have been translated into German. Erna Brandenberger published a bilingual anthology with short stories.
Individual evidence
- ^ Michael Rössner: Latin American literary history. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart, Weimar 2002, p. 123.
- ↑ Rössner 2002, p. 171 f.
- ^ La vanguardia Hugo Mayo la difundió desde Guayaquil al Ecuador , in: www.expreso.ec, September 22, 2013.
- ↑ On the following Erna Brandenberger 1995, afterword, p. 208 f.
- ^ Karl H. Heise: El grupo de Guayaquil: Arte y tecnica de sus novelas sociales , Madrid: Coleccion Nova Scholar 1975.
See also
Web links
literature
- Erna Brandenberger: Stories from Spanish America, Ecuador. Cuentos hispanoamericanos, Ecuador. Munich 2002 (bilingual)