Mexican literature

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The Mexican literature is the Spanish-language literature of Mexico and as such part of the Hispano-American literature . It is one of the most extensive, most prominent and internationally best-known literatures in Latin America, not just since Octavio Paz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990 . Against the background of the extreme social diversity of Mexico, it is characterized by numerous philosophical and cultural controversies, a difficult search for identity and, from the colonial era to the present day, recurring demands for justice and reparation.

In the United States , there has been a Spanish-language literature by Mexican immigrants called Chicano literature since the mid-19th century, which is beyond the scope of this article.

Pre-Columbian literatures

The pictorial legacy of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico in the form of wall paintings and a few codices was ignored for a long time, apart from a few clerics who saved the remains from the Inquisition. The 8th century BC Olmec glyphs, which originated in BC, have not yet been deciphered. No written evidence has come down to us from the Zapotecs .

The Maya apparently had chronicles in hieroglyphic writing that reported the history of the people in decline. Most of Mayan literature and pictorial texts were destroyed by the Spanish Inquisition under Diego de Landa . Today, Popol Vuh (Book of the Council) and Chilam Balam (Prophet Jaguar), which were only recorded in the languages ​​of the Quiché in Guatemala and the Maya Yucatans with Latin letters at the time of the Spanish colonization since the 16th century , provide information about the mythology and history of the Maya. Mayan literature also includes expressive dance dramas and chants that have been handed down in Quiché.

In the case of various texts handed down in the classical language of the Aztecs , the Nahuatl , it is unclear to what extent the processing by missionaries falsified the original character and whether they originally bore the character of (heroic) epics or sagas written in the metrical style. These include the Annals of Tlatelolco (a chronicle handed down as a manuscript from 1558) and the Crónica Mexicayotl . When singing and poetry ( cuicatl ) are u. a. A distinction was made between hymns to the gods, war songs or spring songs. The traditional prose includes huehuetlatolli (speeches and admonitions of the ancients) as well as teotlatolli (stories of gods) and itolloca (chronicles). The poetry reaches a climax in the orally transmitted chants of the Chichimean poet king Nezahualcóyotl, written down by the Spaniards in Nahuatl . It was not until the 20th century that modern authors were inspired again by the legacy of the Aztecs.

Colonial times

The first book was printed in Mexico as early as 1539. It was a spiritual work of the first Mexican bishop Juan de Zumárraga . The dominant literary form of the colonial era, however, was the chronicle , which was only rediscovered and used by investigative Mexican journalism of the 20th century. Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492–1550), who took part in the conquest of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán as a foot soldier under Hernán Cortés , wrote a report on the conquest in 1568, which critically dealt with the claims of Cortes and his policy towards the Indians, but was not printed until decades later.

Page 51 of the IX. Book of the Codex Florentinus by Bernardino de Sahagún, written in Nahuatl and written in Latin script

In 1569 the monk Bernardino de Sahagún presented the culture and history as well as sayings and hymns of the Nahuatl- speaking Indians in the “Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España” . The great verse epic “El Bernardo o Victoria de Roncesvalles”, written by the theologian and Crown judge Bernardo de Balbuena , with 5000 octaves (stanzas of 8 verses each) is a complex example of the knight and heroic epic of the late 16th century. Balbuena also founded the genre of the shepherd novel in Mexico. The mestizo chronicler Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl gives in his Historia chichimeca , created between 1615 and 1650, an extensive account of the history of the Chichimecs, which is adapted to the structure of the Bible. He presents an Indian creation story, an Indian deluge , a Babylonian language confusion of the Toltecs and Chichimeks and equates his ancestor Nezahualcóyotl with Charlemagne . It is the most extensive account of the prehistory of the Chichimecs up to the arrival of the Spaniards and the wars of subjugation, the end of which has not been preserved, written in elegant Spanish. You can even feel the influence of Spanish romances on the Cid theme.

Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora

In the 17th century, the picturesque productions, which initially served to evangelize the Indians, developed into a separate theater life in Mexico. Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (1580 / 1581–1639) went to Spain in 1614 and wrote successful comedies, heroic and intrigues in the Lope de Vegas tradition . Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote secular and spiritual poems and dramas in the style of culturalismo as a teenager at the court of the Viceroy of New Spain , and later as a nun in a liberal monastery . (with mannered language games) and thus violated the rule to only deal with spiritual things. Her friend, mathematician, scientist and historian Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora can be seen as a forerunner of the Enlightenment and a fighter against superstition. He learned Nahuatl, did research on the early history of the Aztecs, reported on the hunger revolt of the Indians in 1692 and contributed to the development of a Mexican ( Creole) nationalism. The Franciscan Agustín de Vetancurt (1620-1700), whose work was supported by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, was not only a chronicler of his order and researcher of the Nahuatl, but also a historian and narrator of many indigenous traditions.

José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

In the 18th century, with the decline of Spanish scholasticism , which continued to have an impact with its colonial ethics into the 19th century, there was intellectual stagnation in the viceroyalty, which was also caused by the enlightened reforms under Charles III. was not overcome. The goals of the Catholic Enlightenment , which was only received towards the end of the century, was represented by the writer, journalist and publisher of several magazines critical of social and colonialism, the "Mexican Voltaire" José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827), who became Mexico's first professional writer . In addition to plays and fables, he wrote his four-volume work Periquillo Sarniento (1816–1830), a criticism of the colonial bureaucracy in the form of a picaresque novel - a genre that has already died out in Spain. This first great novel of the continent combines the baroque Spanish tradition with philosophical thoughts and elements of the educational novel of the Enlightenment and the class satire. His hero, a first-person narrator, serves in the punishment company in Manila ; he not only ridicules the institutions, but also makes suggestions for improvement, including feeding small children. Later works by Lizardis no longer reached the level of his main work. Because of his rejection of slavery and attacks on the viceroy, he came into conflict with the censors and was temporarily imprisoned; but even after independence in 1821 he was persecuted as a federalist and Freemason .

The time after independence and the turmoil of the 19th century

The time during and after the struggle for Mexico's independence was characterized by the close connection between poetry, journalism and practical political activities of the authors, both among the supporters of Spain and among the Mexican nationalists. B. with Agustín Pomposo Fernández and his student Andrés Quintana Roo, who is on the political opposite side . The authors of this period dealt with the history of the colonization of Mexico, the conflicts between central power and federal states and the laborious creation of a national identity. An example is the career of the publicist and playwright Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza . He became known for comedy plays in the Molière style , fled to England in 1820, entered the Mexican diplomatic service on his return, became head of the State Theater of Mexico City and foreign minister.

The liberation struggle of 1821 was staged by large landowners and the church, also to prevent the influence of liberal and Napoleonic ideas from Spain after the local revolution of 1820. It led to a long chain of revolutions and counter-revolutions, which promoted isolation and delayed the "import" of European models, but in the longer term included the mestizos and ultimately also the Indians more and thus promoted their politicization and their participation in cultural life.

romance

In the 1820s, Mexico also began to be fascinated by the European Middle Ages. During his exile in Mexico, the Cuban poet José María Heredia , who translated Ossian into Spanish, was celebrated for his romantic odes. But European romanticism was received later in Mexico than in other Latin American countries. In Argentina , in particular , it flourished in the form of an independent gaucho literature , while in Mexico it remained largely “European”. B. in the romantic work of Fernando Calderón . Exceptions were the poems, epigrams , short stories and plays by Ignacio Rodríguez Galván, who died in Cuba in 1842 at the age of 26 . He is considered the first Mexican romantic and wrote some key works of Creole nationalism in the late 1830s. The best known is his poem “La profecía de Guatimoc”, a nocturnal fatalistic monologue by the Aztec ruler Cuauhtémoc in 458 verses in different meters, in which, however, the return to natural law is postulated. It is based on a tradition of historical considerations that begins with the Brevísima historia de la destrucción de las Indias (1619) by Bartolomé de las Casas and extends to the Menologio franciscano de los varones mas señalados (1694) by Agustín de Vetancurt.

The close connection between political, journalistic and literary activities continued under the dictatorship of Antonio López de Santa Anna , during the French interventions of the 1860s and the Second Empire , after the re-establishment of the republic and under the long-standing dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz . In all these phases the liberal writer, historian and politician Guillermo Prieto , founder of the Mexican Academy of Poetry (1836), was alternately active on the government and opposition sides.

The short creative period of the poet Manuel Acuna coincided with the cultural boom after the re-establishment of the republic in the late 1860s. His work marks the transition from the predominant positivistic- historical-philosophical thinking to neo-romanticism. During the reign of Porfirio Díaz, the partly realistic, partly romantic bandit novel also developed . One of Díaz's political and journalistic opponents was the poet Salvador Díaz Mirón , who was able to continue his work into the 20th century.

Symbolism and Costumbrismo

On the threshold of symbolism stands the lyric poet Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera , who was influenced by Alfred de Musset , Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire , but also by classical Spanish forms and who , in addition to his work as a surgeon, wrote under various pseudonyms. Alongside the lyricist Amado Nerva and the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, he is the main representative of Latin American modernism and, together with Carlos Díaz Dufoo, founded the important literary magazine "Revista Azul", which takes its name from the Parisian "Revue politique et littéraire" (after the color of the envelope called "Revue bleue"). The "Revista Azul" made symbolist literature known in Latin America in a short time and was replaced in 1898 by the "Revista moderna". The poet, playwright and novelist Rafael Delgado vacillated between the realistic portrayals of costumbrismo and modernism .

The big topic: the revolution 1910–1920 and the new national identity

The doctor, writer and revolutionary Mariano Arzuela (1873-1952), a later exponent of Costumbrismo, founded the genre of the revolutionary novel in 1911. In 1915 he published the first major work of the revolution, which described the struggle against Porfirio Díaz with special emphasis on violencia , the violence of those days ("Los de abajo", English: "The rightsless", 1992). Martín Luis Guzmán also opposed Díaz , who had to go into exile twice and who became famous and highly honored late on for his revolutionary books, "El águila y la serpiente" (1928) and "Memorias de Pancho Villa" (1940), which were less black and white . The supporters of the revolution also included the poet and publicist Ramón López Velarde (1888–1921) , who became famous for his nationalist-revolutionary poetry .

On the other hand, the poet José Juan Tablada , who was impressed by a trip to Japan , made the form of haiku known in the Spanish-speaking world and developed it into a pictorial poem, and the poet and essayist Alfonso Reyes , who was influenced by Surrealism , Goethe and the philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset (“ La cena ”, 1917;“ Visión de Anáhuac ”, 1917), a co-founder of the group“ Ateneo de la Juventud ”, went into exile as opponents of the revolution and did not return until 1935 and 1927 respectively. On only about 30 pages of the poetic essay about the high valley of Anáhuac an impressionistic picture of the largely lost culture of the region, its discovery, cultivation and settlement, its people and its flora. Da Poem became very popular and contributed to Mexico's cultural identity; Reyes' friend Valery Larbaud even spoke of a "Mexican national anthem".

This generation also included the writer, philosopher, minister of culture and school reformer José Vasconcelos , who, after the discussions about the national identity of Mexico at the turn of the century, made a renewed attempt to establish a theory of a new national, multiracial and multicultural Mexican identity based on the psychology of nations (“La raza cósmica” 1925). With this he influenced the later representatives of the Indian perspective in magical realism, e.g. B. the Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias . Vasconcelos' racist perspective, however, implied the inferiority of blacks, who should not participate in the racial mixture.

The "institutionalization" of the revolution in the "golden thirties"

The “institutionalization” of the revolution through the establishment of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in 1929, to a certain extent its “freezing”, led to a close connection again in the 1930s after the chaotic 1920s, in which many authors sympathized with anarchism of literature and politics. Many writers got into public positions, worked as cultural officials, university teachers, politicians, diplomats or in international organizations and became dependent on government payments and literary prices. Above all, the diplomatic service made it possible for many authors to travel to Europe or North America and to establish contacts there and at the same time continue their literary work. For example, the Chile-born Roberto Bolaño , who moved to Mexico with his parents at the age of 13, has a Mexican professor say in his novel 2666 (2004): “In Mexico [...] the intellectuals work for the state. It was like that when the PRI was in power and it is the same under the PAN government . The individual intellectual can be an ardent follower or a critic of state power. The state doesn't care. The state feeds and watches him in silence. "

From the late 1930s to the 1970s, however, it was only with this state support and subsidy that it was possible to set up and maintain a committed literary business and a (not cost-covering) publishing industry in Mexico. This was all the more important because the (world) market for Spanish-language literature was narrowly limited by the censorship of the Franco regime and some other Latin American countries, and so the literary production of Mexico was inhibited and threatened by paternalism. The state-subsidized publisher Fondo de Cultura Económica , founded in 1934 by Daniel Cosío Villegas , published numerous books and magazines at low prices, which were distributed all over the Latin American continent.

While modernism continued to exist in poetry in the "Golden Thirties", the 1930s, the revolution remained the most important topic of narrative literature, for example in the novels of Rafael Felipe Muñoz and Nellie Campobello and many films of that time. With José Rubén Romeros (“Mi caballo, mi perro y mi rifle” 1936) the revolutionary novel slips into the picaresque novel. In the 1940s, Agustín Yáñez Delgadillo continued this tradition with Al filo del agua (1947), but developed the narrative technique much further and thus founded the modern Mexican novel. For John S. Brushwood, this was a roman-clef in Mexican literature.

Mauricio Magedaleno (1906–1986) and the politician Jorge Ferretis emerged as novelists, storytellers, playwrights and screenwriters . Magedaleno “managed” the artistic legacy of the revolution in a creative way. Antonio Mediz Bolio and Rudolfo Usigli are among the playwrights of the post-revolutionary era . Also Héctor Morales Saviñón treated in his novels and stories, the themes of war and revolution. Efrén Hernández cultivated the genre of short stories with subtle humor .

Xavier Villaurrutia

The theater was also promoted by the state and flourished. Contributing to this was the renewal of forms of expression through the arrival of foreign directors such as Sano Seki from Japan, who was influenced by Meyerhold and who found asylum in Mexico in 1939.

The group Los Contemporáneos , who were born shortly after the turn of the century and who opened up to transcultural influences, opposed the macho revolutionary pathos as early as 1928 , such as the lyric poet José Gorostiza , who was influenced by the French model and who left behind a narrow but impressive work , most of which was published in the 1960s with the exception of a volume of poetry from 1925, and Salvador Novo , at the same time prose writer and playwright , furthermore the writer and publicist Jorge Cuesta , who was influenced by TS Eliot and Rainer Maria Rilke, and Xavier Villaurrutia , who also wrote the screenplay for the successful film Vámonos con Pancho Villa (1935). Villaurrutia and Novo founded the Ulises experimental theater in 1927 (1927).

In 1938, the visit of the French surrealist André Breton to Mexico, which was actually intended for Leon Trotsky , who was living there in exile , led to the rapid spread of the ideas of surrealism. Together with Diego Rivera , Breton wrote the manifesto Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendant , which shaped the work of numerous Mexican artists and writers.

Authors in exile in Mexico

In the 1930s and 1940s Mexico became an important country of exile for German and Austrian writers and political publicists, including many Jews. The German-born B. Traven , one of the actors of the Munich Soviet Republic , who emigrated to Mexico around 1924, but whose identity was not revealed until much later, became particularly well known . Up until then, no modern author had dealt so intensively with the mentality, culture and living conditions of the Quiché -Maya as Traven.

Mexico was at the bottom of the list among the countries of exile in terms of admission of around 1200-3000 German speakers, but was a center of exile of particular importance because of the “top-class political and literary emigrants and the publishers, magazines and associations they supported”. This also applied to the approximately 20,000 - 30,000 Spanish, Catalan and Basque civil war refugees and intellectual defenders of the Spanish republic such as Max Aub ( Campo cerrado , 1943), Odó Hurtado i Martí with his books about pre-war Barcelona, Pere Calders ( Cròniques de la veritat oculta , 1955), Manuel Altolaguirre , José Bergamín , who published works by García Lorca and many others in the publishing house Séneca , which he founded , Telésforo Monzón and José Moreno Villa . While the Fondo de Cultura Económica became the most important international mouthpiece for Spanish exiles, the publisher El libro libre was one of the most important German-language exile publishers. He edited books by 25 German-speaking authors living in Mexican exile, including Anna Seghers , Egon Erwin Kisch , Ludwig Renn , Ernst Sommer and others. Many of them have been translated into Spanish. The Goethe Institute in Mexico City is still dedicated to maintaining this heritage today. The influence of German emigrants on Mexican literature, however, remained extremely small because of their small number and the language barrier.

In the 1950s to 1980s, various authors from Latin American dictatorships went into exile in Mexico, such as the Guatemalan narrator Augusto Monterroso and the Colombian author and activist Laura Restrepo . Other Latin American authors studied during this time at the Autonomous University of Mexico in Coyoacán , which was established in the 1950s and was at times the largest in the world. B. the Panamanian Enrique Jaramillo Levi . In the 1950s, Paco Ignacio Taibo I and his son Paco Ignacio Taibo II , who had left their homeland Spain in the civil war, emigrated to Mexico. The Colombian Fernando Vallejo from Medellín , who continues to write about topics in his home province, finally moved to Mexico in 2007 after years of residence .

The post-war generation

A number of authors born around 1911–1925 shape the image of Mexican literature to this day. Even before the Second World War, Octavio Paz, Rafael Solana, Alberto Quintero Álvarez, Efraín Huerta (as editor-in-chief), José Revueltas and others had founded the Taller magazine , which only had 12 issues between 1938 and 1941, but was effective for one Modernized culture and advocated an opening to the philosophical currents of the time.

The most important works by these authors fall from 1950 to 1975 ( Generación de los 50 ). Disappointment with the institutionalized revolution is expressed in many of her works, particularly after the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968. Since the 1950s, women have become more prominent in Mexican literature; their choice of topics differs significantly from that of the male authors, for whom masculinity is a constant theme.

This also applies to Octavio Paz, who is widely recognized as the great master of Mexican literature. His work has been translated into many languages. His early work as a poet was influenced by surrealism. In the Spanish Civil War he fought on the side of the Republicans and lived as a diplomat in France until 1962. He became known for his major essay “El laberinto de la soledad” (first self-critically revised in 1950, 1969 by “Postdata”; German: “The Labyrinth of Solitude” 1970), in which he attempted a new justification of national identity, the “Mexicanid “Under the influence of contemporary French philosophy and psychoanalysis . In “Piedra de sol” the influence of Indian mythology can be felt. Later works are influenced by structuralism or - like "Ladera este" - by Indian poetry. Paz received in addition to the Nobel Prize for Literature a. a. the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 1984.

In the work of the communist poet and journalist Efraín Huerta , influenced by Juan Ramón Jiménez and José Emilio Pacheco , Mexico City appears as a subject. Huerta rejected aesthetic subjectivism, found a more informal but militant style and thematized wars, civil wars, capitalism and imperialism. He was silent about the events of Tlatelolco because his children were also affected. The Trotskyist narrator, screenwriter and political essayist José Revueltas , who has been imprisoned several times since 1932, published the novel Los muros de agua ("Walls of Water") in 1941 about slave laborers who were deported to the Islas Marías . He was imprisoned again for two years in 1968 on charges of being a co-author of the student unrest that led to the Tlatelolco massacre, but received the National Prize in the 1970s.

Even the Magic Realism was representative in Mexico: Juan Rulfo ( "El Llano en llamas", 1953, Eng .: The Llano in flames , "Pedro Páramo", 1955) was extremely concentrated short stories a model for many authors. The Premio de Literatura Latinoamericana y del Caribe Juan Rulfo was named after him. The existentialist- influenced dramas and novels by Elena Garro , who was temporarily married to Octavio Paz, have echoes of magical realism. She probably influenced the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez through her prose . The stories by Guadalupe Dueñas are characterized by precision and a frugal to minimalist style with fantastic-surrealistic elements. Rafael Solana became known as a surrealist playwright, narrator and essayist , one of the most prolific authors of the Generación de Taller , who published continuously for over 50 years. His topic is humanism under the conditions of a technical civilization, increasing division of labor, corruption, nepotism and intellectual paralysis. The novels and short stories of the somewhat younger Sergio Galindo , the founder of the cultural and literary magazine La Palabra y el Hombre , have been translated into several languages. In her novels and stories, the doctor Emma Dolujanoff presented everyday family and psychological conflicts and dealt with topics from psychiatry .

Guadalupe Teresa Amor Schmidtlein ("Pita Amor") occupies a special position with her expressionistic-metaphysical poetry. She served many artists as a model and muse (such as the painter Diego Rivera) and was friends with Salvador Dalí , Frida Kahlo , Pablo Picasso , Juan Rulfo and Juan José Arreola , among others . As a socially critical author of short stories and micro-narratives influenced by the Cuban experiment (so-called microrelatos as in “La Feria” 1963, German “Der Jahrmarkt”), he clearly set himself apart from Rulfo. Rosario Castellanos was a feminist author who also campaigned for indigenous peoples and literacy with the help of puppet theater . Her novel "Oficio de Tenieblas" (Eng. "The dark smile of Catalina Díaz", 1993), which is in the tradition of magical realism, describes the uprising of the Chamula Indios against the white landowners in the highlands of Chiapas . The stories and novels of Ramón Rubín , a representative of indigenism and professor at the Universidad de Guadalajara , deal with the life of the Indians in the north-west of the country ; they show that the better educated Indians exclude and despise the poor uneducated Indians just as the Creoles do.

Works by Emilio Carballido became known all over Latin America and partly also in Europe and North America . From the 1950s to the 1980s he wrote over 100 plays and screenplays (including for the film "El censo", 1977) as well as novels and short stories. Jorge Ibargüengoitia became known as a playwright, novelist and storyteller for his humorous-sarcastic style, which was interspersed with sexual allusions and has cynical and dark sides; he wrote satires about the church and the scientific community and dismantled the myths of the Mexican revolution. In 1983 he died in a plane crash in Madrid in which many Latin American artists and intellectuals were killed.

"La Generación de Medio Siglo"

A whole generation of Mexican writers who published from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s, the “Generación de Medio Siglo” or “Generation of the Fifties” - in painting, the corresponding movement is called “Generación de la Ruptura” because it was with the oversized role models such as Rivera or Siqueiros - is little known in Europe. Their representatives learned about the growing prosperity that the export boom of World War II brought with it. They forego large drafts, their works hardly reveal any influences from philosophical positions and discussions. They avoid the pathos of revolution, take a position against nationalism and realism and are cosmopolitan. These include the extremely versatile Juan García Ponce , born in the lowlands of Yucatán , one of the few Mexican connoisseurs of German literature, as well as the poet and essayist Gabriel Zaid , the avant-garde artist Salvador Elizondo , who was influenced by Ezra Pound , and co-founder of the magazine "Cuadernos del Viento" Huberto Batis and the well-traveled poet, novelist, narrator, lecturer and Cervantes Prize winner José Emilio Pacheco , whose realistic reports and psychological studies from the banal everyday world often tip over into the fantastic and dreamed of. Also to be mentioned are the narrator and essayist José de la Colina (* 1934) and the socially critical-subversive narrator Inés Arredondo . The narrator, novelist, translator, professor of literature and diplomat Sergio Pitol , who was influenced by both Latin American fantasy and (Eastern) European literature and his work as ambassador in Prague and as cultural attaché in other Eastern European countries, also began in to write this phase. However, with the further development of his work, his view increasingly goes beyond the traditional Mexican themes.

Social criticism and social documentation

Carlos Fuentes stands between the generations , the son of a diplomat who spent a long time in the USA, Latin America and Europe and is one of the great Latin American novelists alongside Gabriel García Márquez and the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa . For over 50 years, the former member of the Mexican Communist Party published numerous novels and short stories that have been translated into many languages ​​and have received numerous awards (including the Cervantes Prize in 1987 and the UNESCO Picasso Medal in 1994). The polyphony of the different social classes and sharp social criticism of the suppression of social movements in the rapidly industrializing country under the presidency of Adolfo López Mateos are combined in his work with historical retrospect. It gives Indians, small employees and traders a voice as well as military men of different ranks, intellectuals, entrepreneurs and large landowners. In his novel "Terra Nostra" he analyzes 2000 years of history of Spanish culture and Mexico's relations with the Spanish colonial power. “La muerte de Artemio Cruz” (1962) is a disillusioning novel about hope and betrayal during the Mexican Revolution. The collection of short stories “La frontera de cristal” deals critically with relations with the USA. In “La nueva novela hispanoamericana” he analyzes the history of the Mexican novel and the influences it has on it - albeit with neglect of Chicano literature. In “Cambio de piel” (1967) the influence of the fantastic Argentine literature becomes clear.

Elena Poniatowska (2008)

Four years younger than Fuentes is Elena Poniatowska , who was born in Paris and whose parents fled to Mexico in 1941. For decades she has been one of Mexico's outstanding journalists, chroniclers and writers. Influences u. a. through Teresa de la Parra she made a name for herself through documentary literature in which she addressed the oppression of Mexican women and life in the slums. In “La noche de Tlatelolco” (1970) she describes the massacre of 1968, in “Nada, nadie. Las voces del temblor “(1988) the consequences of the earthquake of 1985. In her work, as well as in her biographies of Mexican women, documentary and fictional elements are mixed. In 2013 she received the Cervantes Prize.

The political lyric poet and MP Jaime Sabines , who was born in Chiapas , also deals with the events of Tlatelolco in a conscious "impoverished" everyday language ("Tlatelolco" 1968); Octavio Paz considered him one of the greatest poets of the Spanish language. In the 1970s, the Chilean Roberto Bolaño lived in exile in Mexico as a literary provocateur and in 1975 founded the movement of the infrared realists (“ Infrarrealismo ”), a kind of Mexican Dada movement, together with Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, which was directed against the traditional literary business . Both shaped the style of "punk" everyday poetry of the group influenced by French surrealism, which also included José Vicente Anaya and Rubén Medina . José Agustin (* 1944) mixes verbatim speech and report in his novels and uses the technique of the stream of thoughts ; its protagonists are mostly young middle-class people.

"Literature of Disasters" since 1980

Mexican prose since around 1980 has been heavily influenced by political and economic crises, historical trauma, the effects of incomplete modernization, ethnic conflict, migration, and ongoing urbanization. The end of the oil boom and the country's economic decline triggered a political crisis and the country's insolvency at the beginning of the 1980s, which was exposed in literature as a crisis of state institutions and the corrupt party apparatus, especially the party of the institutionalized revolution PRI . Everyday life remained marked by violence. Tensions grew between the various ethnic groups, to which an increasing number of East Asians belong. Among the best-known authors of this time are Carlos Montemayor (“Guerra en el Paraíso” 1991, German: “War in Peace” 1998), José Agustín (“Cerca del Fuego” 1986), who like Gustavo Sainz, who now lives in the USA of the "Movement of the Wave" ("La Onda"), as well as Héctor Aguilar ("Morir en el Golfo"). The socialist social anthropologist , poet and narrator Eraclio Zepeda promoted indio theater and social movements in Chiapas.

Many authors of this generation differ stylistically from the great models of the 1960s and 1970s. Ángeles Mastretta ( "Arrancame la vida") describes the corruption from the perspective of the wife of a cacique, making use of the shape of the political thriller , which he did not shrink from trivial cliches. The inclusion of colloquial language also characterizes the numerous, award-winning crime novels and political thrillers by Paco Ignacio Taibo II , who as a union activist was close to the protest movement of 1968 and also wrote non-fiction books on political and historical topics. He founded the literary festival Semana negra (Black Week) in Gijón .

Paco Ignacio Taibo II (2014)

The 1985 earthquake in Mexico City was a trauma similar to the Tlatelolco massacre. The journalist Cristina Pacheco, born in 1941, and others criticized the complete failure of state institutions, the self-organization of the poor in the barrios ( Literatura de barrio ) and the promoted new social movements. Carlos Monsiváis , Cristina Pacheco ("Zona de desastre") and Elena Poniatowska began to write daily chronicles and to publish them continuously in newspapers. Pacheco also put multi-hour magazine and television interviews into a narrative form in order to turn breaking news, the unresolved past or interesting biographies into literary fiction.

Even the theater, which is partly funded by the state, even if the funds are becoming scarcer, deals with the political history of the country, with the excesses of violence and drug wars, migration, neo-colonialism and the destruction of families. The Carretera 45 theater founded in Ciudad Juárez under Antonio Zúñiga, which has had its seat in Cuauhtémoc (Mexico City) since 1999 , became internationally known .

In the 1990s, the novel - especially the alternative historiography in novel form - gained further ground compared to the narrative. Fernando del Paso was an important representative of the historical novel, interspersed with fantastic elements. He took inspiration from Aztec mythology, the baroque picaresque novel , but also from the work of Laurence Sterne and James Joyce . There are three novels by him in German, including “Nachrichten aus dem Imperium”. Margo Glantz , internationally known linguist and literary scholar, deals with topics such as sexuality, eroticism, physicality and migration based on baroque traditions. As a critic, he dealt with the work of Juana Inés de la Cruz. The debut novel Campeón gabacho (2016, German  Gringo Champ , 2019) by the then 19-year-old Aura Xilonen about a young migrant is written in an artificial language with many new creations that can be described as neo-baroque.

In search of diversity instead of national identity

Younger authors document a growing breadth of possible life plans and also focus more on the culture of indigenous and immigrant groups. There was a veritable boom in feminist literature. Sara Sefchovich deconstructs the Mexican image of women in her novel La señora de los sueños (1994). Bárbara Jacobs , daughter of Lebanese immigrants, became known through novels and short stories. Myriam Moscona , who comes from a Bulgarian-Jewish family, writes not only in Spanish but also in Sephardic . Ignacio Padilla (1968–2016) and Eloy Urroz (* 1967) criticized the questionable identity constructions of Macondismo , which had influenced Latin American literature since the 1960s. Even Jorge Volpi breaks in his psychological research-based novels such. B. in his fictional scientist biography The Klingsor Paradox with Magic Realism. The three belong to the so-called crack group , which often set their stories in Europe. Homosexual authors (but still seldom lesbian women) have been making themselves heard for their topics since the 1980s. These include the narrator and playwright Luis Zapata Quiroz (* 1951), the publicist and essayist Carlos Monsiváis (1938–2010), Salvador Novo and Ethel Krauze (“Atrapadas en la casa”, 2002).

The baroque language is increasingly giving way to the scarcity and lacunae that are based on Arreola and Rulfo. In this tradition are Jorge Comensal's tragicomic satire “Metamorphoses” (German 2019) about a lawyer who has lost his language through cancer of the tongue and befriends a parrot, Augusto Monterroso's short prose and Bernarda Solís ' feminist stories. Her criticism of gender relations and machismo refers to the still most important issues in Mexican women's literature. Mention should Aline Pettersson, Ethel Krauze , Dorelia Barahona and today in New York living Carmen Boullosa , who also historical themes treated in a feminist perspective. There are two novels by her in German. Violence, vigilante justice and drugs are the themes of a trilogy by Yuri Herrera (German: "The King, the Sun, Death"). The postmodern short stories by Mario Bellatin, who u. a. Borrows from the laconic literature of Joseph Roth.

The literary life of Mexico is currently decentralized. The culture of the Northwest moved to the center of the work of the historian Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo (1950–2013) from Monterrey . The historian and writer José Raúl Navejas Dávila teaches in Guadalajara . In Tijuana and Mexicali (both in Baja California ) and in Baja California Sur , literary circles and workshops have been formed since the 1980s. Authors from Baja California are Oscar Hernández (* 1955) ("Nubes", 1983), Edmundo Lizardi (* 1953) and Manuel Romero. There were also writers who campaigned for the establishment of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California and thus for the liberation of Lower California from its cultural isolation. In analogy to Mexicanidad , one speaks of Californidad when searching for regional identity .

The authors born in the 1970s are often referred to as generación non-existent , no generation or virtual generation; there is little in common between them other than that they operate online and they rarely meet in person anymore. These include Antonio Ortuño , whose precisely calculated novels deal with the themes of violence and flight ( Die Verbrannten , Madrid, Mexico ), and Juan Pablo Villalobos (* 1973), a representative of narco literature, who lives temporarily in Brazil and now in Spain . The work of the narrator, novelist and essayist in Guadalupe Nettel (* 1973), who is also active in multimedia projects, has received numerous awards .

The younger generation of authors - many of them from Guadalajara - are not inclined to experiment with form; they are storytellers with a strong local theme. The downside of this development is that European interest in Mexican literature has diminished significantly in recent decades.

Publishing and book fairs

Main entrance to the Guadalajara International Book Fair 2002

Mexico is the largest Spanish-language book market in the world with over 120 million potential readers. The Fondo de Cultura Económica has published around 7,000 books since it was founded in 1934, of which 5,000 are repeatedly reprinted. It now has branches in many Latin American countries and in the USA and has developed into the largest publisher in Latin America. A well-equipped international book fair with a literature festival ( Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara , FIL ) has been held in Guadalajara since 1987, and is now the largest in the Spanish-speaking world. Although the publication opportunities in Mexico are comparatively good - published in 2009 including reprints of over 18,500 books in 219 active publishers - many authors have to live from magazine publications and the numerous state and university literary awards. The increasing number of translations into foreign languages ​​provides a remedy here.

Important literary prizes

Numerous national, international and university-sponsored literary prizes are awarded in Mexico. These include the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes (since 1945) in the linguistics and literature category, the Premio Nacional de Literatura José Fuentes Mares (since 2000), the Premio FIL de Literatura en Lenguas Romances ( since 1991) awarded by the Book Fair in Guadalajara since 1991 named after Juan Rulfo until 2005), the Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , which has also been awarded by the Book Fair since 1993 , the Premio nacional de ensayo joven Octavio Paz , the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia , who is named after the Mexican-Spanish playwright of the 17th century Premio Estatal al Mérito Literario Juan Ruiz de Alarcón of the State of Guerrero and many others.

A special honor is the admission of authors to the Academia Mexicana de la lengua , which is mainly reserved for scientists.

Four Mexican authors received the most important literary prize in the Hispanic-speaking area, the Premio Cervantes : Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Sergio Pitol and José Emilio Pacheco. The Premio Juan Rulfo , however, is not a Mexican prize; it has been awarded by the French Radio since 1982, but in cooperation with the Cervantes Institute in Paris, the Casa de América Latina , the Instituto de México and the Colegio de España in Paris as well as the Spanish edition of the magazine Le Monde diplomatique and other institutions.

literature

  • Eladio Cortés: Dictionary of Mexican Literature. Greenwood 1992.
  • Adalbert Dessau: The Mexican Revolutionary Novel. (= New contributions to literary studies. Volume 26). Berlin 1967.
  • David William Foster (Ed.): Mexican Literature: A History. University of Texas Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-292-78653-0 .
  • Seymour Menton : El cuento hispanoamericano. (= Colección Commemorativa 70 Aniversario, vol. 33). Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City 2005, ISBN 968-16-7687-4 .
  • Michael Rössner: The Hispanoamerican literature. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 20, Munich 1996, pp. 40-56.
  • Michael Rössner: Latin American literary history. 2nd expanded edition. Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, especially pp. 10-27, 110-115, 137-148, 263-283, 406-422.
  • Herwig Weber: Mexican Literature (1938 - 2018) and European Modernism. Weidler Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-89693-737-7 .
  • Mexican literature. In: The Brockhaus Literature. Mannheim 1988, volume 3.
  • Working group Mexico Studies, Münster (ed.): Forays through contemporary Mexican literature. Verlag Walter Frey, Berlin 1998. (work analyzes)
Anthologies
  • Erna Brandenberger (Ed.): Cuentos mexicanos. Stories from Mexico. 5th edition. dtv, Munich 2007. (German / Spanish)
  • Andreas Klotsch (Ed.): Mexican storytellers. Volk und Welt, Berlin 1978. (38 stories)
  • WA Oerley (Ed.): Mexico. (= Modern storytellers of the world. Volume 2). 3. Edition. Horst Erdmann Verlag, Tübingen / Basel 1968.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Kruip: Church and society in the process of ethical historical self-understanding. The Mexican controversy over the 'discovery of America'. Münster: Lit Verlag 1996 (= publications of the Institute for Christian Social Sciences at the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster 34), p. 325.
  2. ^ Ronald A. Barnett: Mesoamerican epic poetry and saga: A survey. Online in: mexconnect.com 2014 , accessed October 31, 2015
  3. ↑ Michael Rössner (ed.): Latin American literary history. 2nd ext. Edition, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, p. 21 f.
  4. ^ Hermann Trimborn: The old American literatures. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Munich 1996, Volume 20, p. 57 f.
  5. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 41.
  6. ↑ Rössner 2002, p. 23.
  7. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 41.
  8. ↑ The counterpart to Conceptismo , the astute, laconic style with surprising punchlines, two main currents of the Spanish Baroque. Rössner 1996, p. 42.
  9. ↑ Jim Tuck: Mexico's Voltaire: Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi (1776-1827). on: mexconnect.com, 1999 , accessed October 31, 2015
  10. ↑ Michael Rössner (ed.): Latin American literary history. 2nd edition, 2002, p. 112 ff.
  11. ↑ Oerley 1968, foreword, p. 12f.
  12. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 45.
  13. ↑ Gerardo Francisco Bobadilla Encinas: “La profecía de Guatimoc”, de Ignacio Rodríguez Galván, o la legitimización poética del nacionalismo criollo. In: Decimónica , 4 (2007) 1 (Spanish, PDF).
  14. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 47.
  15. ↑ Klaus Meyer-Minnemann: The Mexican Revolutionary Novel. In: Iberoamerica. 6th year (1982), No. 1, p. 88. (online)
  16. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 49.
  17. ↑ Roberto Bolaño: 2666. Frankfurt, 5th edition, 2013, p.167 f.
  18. ↑ Oerley 1968, foreword, p. 13 f.
  19. ^ Website of the publisher
  20. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 48.
  21. ^ John Brushwood: México en su novela . México: Fondo de cultura económica 1973, p. 23.
  22. ↑ Oerley 1968, foreword, p. 17.
  23. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 51.
  24. ↑ Herwig Weber: Mexican Literature (1938 - 2018) and European Modernism . Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-89693-737-7 , pp. 191-229 .
  25. ↑ Wolfgang Bittner : B. Traven, Secrets and Riddles . In: Lettre International No. 106/2014, pp. 136-138.
  26. ^ Günter Dammann (ed.): B. Traven's narrative in the constellation of languages ​​and cultures. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005.
  27. ↑ German Exile in Latin America , in: latein America- newsen.de
  28. ↑ Alexander Abusch : Literature in the Age of Socialism. Contributions to the history of literature 1921-1966. Vol. 1–2, Berlin, Weimar 1967
  29. ↑ Tierradenadie.de
  30. ↑ La generación de Taller on cvc.cervantes.es, accessed October 22, 2016. According to Michael Rössner (Ed.): Latin American Literature History, 1st edition 1995, p. 253, the magazine was published from 1936 to 1938.
  31. ↑ Speeches on the 1984 Peace Prize Ceremony online at [1]
  32. ↑ ReLÜ online in ReLÜ , review journal, 2012
  33. ↑ Oerley 1968, foreword, p. 16.
  34. ↑ iifl.unam.mx ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iifl.unam.mx
  35. ↑ See biographical note in Brandenberger (Ed.) 2007, p. 223.
  36. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 53.
  37. ↑ For the following see also portal Mexico-Mexico.de ( Memento from February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  38. ↑ The term was created by Margo Glantz . See http://www.elem.mx/estgrp/datos/39
  39. ↑ See biograph. Note in Brandenberger (Ed.) 2007, p. 225 f.
  40. ↑ Kristine Ibsen: Women's Narrative in Mexico: 1980-1995. Greenwood Publishing, 1997.
  41. ↑ Nicolas Freund: Die hardest Faust in sueddeutsche.de, March 5, 2019.
  42. ^ Nuala Finnegan, Jane E. Lavery (Ed.): The Boom Femenino in Mexico: Reading Contemporary Women's Writing. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.
  43. ↑ Meeting in NDR ( Memento from October 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  44. ↑ Weber 2019, pp. 393-418.
  45. ↑ mexiko-mexico.de ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mexiko-mexico.de
  46. ↑ Literatura de Baja California
  47. ↑ larc.sdsu.edu
  48. ↑ Jaime Meza: 10 protagonistas de la generación inexistente , April 20, 2016
  49. ^ Rita Nierich, Peter B. Schumann: New Mexican literature. SWR 2, broadcast on May 18, 2017 Manuscript .
  50. ^ Website of the fair 2014
  51. ↑ Marco Thomas Bosshard (Ed.): Book market, book industry and book fairs in Germany, Spain and Latin America. Münster 2015, p. 83.
  52. ↑ For more recent translations into German see Perlentaucher: Mexican Literature
  53. ^ Website of the Mexican Academy of Language with information about its members