Paraguayan literature
The Paraguayan Literature is part of the Hispanic and - together with the Portuguese-speaking Brazilian literature - part of Latin American literature . A smaller part of the literature of the country, whose population is now 95 percent of Mestizo descent, is written in Guaraní . In popular song poetry, there are often texts that are written in hybrid Spanish-Guaraní. Both languages are considered below.
Colonial and 19th century
The geographical isolation, a low population density, the pronounced bilingualism compared to other Latin American countries and a long-lasting semi-feudal-colonial social structure have hindered the development of an independent Paraguayan literature. For a long time only a small group of the population spoke Spanish, as the Jesuits severely restricted the immigration of white settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries, while the Guaraní could not spread despite the standardization promoted by the Jesuits as a written language, mainly because of the illiteracy in the Land. In the 18th and 19th centuries Paraguay was largely cut off from the intellectual life of Europe and the urban centers of South America.
Only the chronicle La Argentina manuscrita of the mestizo Ruiz Díaz des Gumán (approx. 1559–1629), who was born in today's Paraguay, is noteworthy from the colonial period . Guzman, a conquistador and colonial administrator, was the first writer to be born in the Río de la Plata region, what was then New Andalusia . He told the story of the conquest of the region until 1574 and also recorded the traditions of the inhabitants. After independence, the country experienced a brief boom under the educational dictatorship of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia . Roberto Villanueva (1804–1848), who tried his hand at various genres and founded Paraguay's first theater in 1831, is considered a romantic of regional importance . After a short bloom, however, the country sank into wars and military dictatorships from the 1840s. The bloody Triple Alliance War from 1854 to 1870 ended with the complete defeat of Paraguay, which lost a large part of its population and territory.
1900-1954
Modernismo in Paraguay spoke up with a long delay. His forerunners included the patriotic mythical-late romantic essayist , poet and journalist Alejandro Guanes (1872-1925), who, however, did not publish a single book during his lifetime, and the classically educated lyric poet Eloy Fariña Núñez (1885-1929). The modernist poetry and prose of the time is shaped by Costumbrist tendencies, contains elements of Guaraní folklore and is not free from sentimentality. In 1917 the anacreontic poetry collection Okara Poty ("Flowers in the Field") and in 1930 the story Kavaju Sakuape by the railway telegraphist and judicial clerk Narciso R. Colmán (pseudonym Rosicrán , 1876-1954), who wrote in Guaraní, was published . An exception is the novel Aurora (1920) by Juan Stefanich, which dealt with topics from the political capital.
The short-lived magazines Crónica (founded by Guillermo Molinas Rolón , 1889–1945) and Juventud (founded by Heriberto Fernández , 1903–1927) became mouthpieces for the modernist movement between 1913 and 1925 . Rolón was an anarchist activist who turned away from literature at an early age and worked in the country. His symbolist poetry ( En la fiesta de la raza ) is influenced by the work of the Argentine Leopoldo Lugones and is considered enigmatic. His friend Manuel Ortiz Guerrero (1897–1933) was one of the first poets to be successful in Guaraní. Sick of leprosy , he wrote his poems on typewriters and sold them door to door. Heriberto Fernández (1903–1927) devoted himself to the drama of the life of the poor, prostitutes and desperate people; his work is already attributed to postmodernism. He died in Paris.
The bloody Chaco War (1932–1935) over the almost deserted Gran Chaco was unexpectedly won by Paraguay. The use of the Spanish language was forbidden on the battlefield: the soldiers were spurred on to fight by Costumbrist Guaraní poets such as Julio Correa Myzkowsky (1890–1953) and Emiliano R. Fernández (1894–1949). On the one hand, the war strengthened national sentiment, but left many poor and landless veterans injured, which exacerbated social conflicts. This was followed by a coup d'état, another civil war, and persecution of intellectuals.
Due to exile and long stays abroad, the authors of the generación del 40 increasingly oriented themselves towards models such as Pablo Neruda and Nicolás Guillén . Josefina Pla (1903–1999), who was born in the Canary Islands , became known as an avant-garde poet, storyteller and playwright. The surrealist poet Hérib Campos Cervera (1908–1953), who lived in exile in Europe from 1931 to 1938, caught up with the poetry of the American continent, but only one book was published during his lifetime. An important researcher of Paraguayan literature and essayist of the generación del 40 was Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá (1917–2007), who lived for a long time in the USA and Mexico.
The author Concepción Leyes de Chaves (1891–1985) campaigned for women's rights . Juan Natalicio González (1897–1966), Paraguayan President from 1948 to 1849, wrote historical books and volumes of poetry in Guaraní and Spanish.
1954-1989
In 1954, General Alfredo Stroessner came to power. The following 35 years were marked by a dictatorship with an extreme personality cult, suppression of the opposition, torture and extrajudicial executions. Since the 1960s, literacy projects have been running among the approximately 50 percent of the population who only spoke Guaraní. However, these were canceled in the 1970s when it was considered too dangerous to train the farm workers. In fact, the bilingualism was pushed back again. The last indigenous groups who did not belong to the Guarani were also expelled and persecuted.
In 1959, the anthropologist León Cadogan put together an important collection of traditional sacred texts in the Mbyá dialect of the Guaraní under the title Ayvu Rapyta (roughly: "The Origin of Language"). The linguist and socialist Félix de Guarania (actually Félix Giménez Gómez, 1924–2011) wrote in Guaraní , who had to go into exile and translated numerous texts from Spanish into Guaraní. The poets Carlos Martínez Gamba (1939–2010) and Carlos Federico Abente (1924–2018) wrote poems in Guaraní, some of which were set to music. The anthropologist and lawyer Ramiro Dominguez (1930-2018), who is counted among the generación del 50 , was active in many literary genres . He advocated the Guaraní literature and published poems in this language. Carlos Martínez Gamba (1939–2010), who returned to writing Guaraní poetry after 2000, has been the first significant narrator in Guaraní since the 1970s.
Jorge Ritter (1908–1977) wrote costumbrist and socially realistic novels and plays in which he described the arduous rural life of Paraguay with a socially critical undertone. In La tierra ardía (1975) he deals with the suffering of people during the Chaco War, in which he himself participated as an officer. Even under Stroessner's predecessors, intellectual protest against the corrupt regime had grown stronger since the late 1940s. The novel La babosa (1952, German "The Nudibranch") by the son of Italian immigrants Gabriel Casaccia (1907–1980), who lived in Argentina for a long time, is considered the beginning of the modern Paraguayan narrative tradition. He also wrote six other novels, some of which can be assigned to social realism. The representative of the generación del 50 Elvio Romero (1926-2004), who was probably the most famous lyric poet of the 20th century and one of the most important voices in exile literature, and the poet José María Gómez Sanjurjo (1930–2004 ) also went into exile in Argentina, who was influenced by Federico García Lorca . 1988). The lyricist José Luis Appleyard (1927–1998) strikes a partly nostalgic, partly sarcastic tone and expresses the feeling of being closed in under the long dictatorship. Rubén Bareiro Saguier (1930-2014) was awarded the Cuban Premio Casa de las Américas for his story Ojo per served (1971) ; for this he was imprisoned in Paraguay. Jean-Paul Sartre , Gabriel García Marquez and many other intellectuals campaigned for his release; but he had to go into exile until the end of Stroessner's dictatorship in 1989. One of the critical authors of the so-called generación del 60 was the psychiatrist and essayist Roque Vallejos (1943–2006). Not only because of political repression, but also in the face of a lack of efficient publishers, many authors had to publish their work abroad until the 1990s. The feminist Renée Ferrer de Arréllaga (* 1944) wrote numerous novels, including the short novel Los nudos del silencio (1988), also published in French and Italian , the story of a pianist who sacrifices her career to a dominant man.
Across national borders, the writer and has been for the Spanish-language literature Paraguay Cervantespreisträger 1989 Augusto Roa Bastos long-term significance. Roa Bastos (1917–2005) lived in exile in Argentina and France for over 40 years. Hijo de hombre (1960), Roa Bastos' debut novel, tells the story of Paraguay and the Chaco War from 1912 to 1936 using the example of two figures, a romantic supporter of the revolution and an uneducated but charismatic popular leader who assumes the role of redeemer. Christian imagery characterizes this work of neo-baroque magical realism . With Yo, el Supremo ("I, the Almighty", 1974) Roa Bastos wrote one of the most important novels in Latin America about the dictatorship of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia from 1814 to 1840, in which national fate is interpreted as a symbol of suffering humanity. The other novels of Roa Bastos and his numerous stories are also assigned to magical realism . Repeatedly he dealt literarily with the fate of the Indians during the colonial period. When he died, three days of national mourning were proclaimed.
Since 1989
Delfina Acosta (* 1956) has received numerous awards for her short stories and poetry. Also through short stories, but also by children's books, novels ( Réquiem del Chaco , 2019) and Comics was Javier Viveros (born 1977) is known. In 2015 he published the comic book Fantasmario: Cuentos de la Guerra del Chaco about the Chaco War, for which he received the Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature from the US PEN Club in 2018 . In 2019 María Isabel Barreto was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura en Paraguay , the most important literary prize in Paraguay , which has been awarded since 1991, for the historical novel Hijo de la revolución about the civil war of 1922. Nila López (* 1954) is at home in many genres; u. a. she writes books for children and young people and works for television. In Tántalo en el trópico she deals with the subject of dictatorship.
This predilection for historical novels, one's own national fate and the heroes of justice is still characteristic of the Spanish-language literature of Paraguay. But current developments are always reflected in these works, in some cases they explicitly use the means of metaleps like Roa Bastos in Los conjurados del Quilombo del Gran Chaco (2001). The stories about the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries have hardly lost any of their topicality, insofar as they always refer to conflicts over land ownership, the acculturation problems of the young mestizos or the impoverishment of the north. In contrast to most Latin American countries, however, there is a lack of big city issues - the largest city by far Asunción has around 1,000,000 inhabitants, the second largest Ciudad del Este just under 400,000. Exceptions can be found in feminist literature. Another exception, which is available in German translation as Book on Demand, is the novel Flores en llamas ("Flowers in Fire") by Nelson Aguilera about the drug trade. Susana Gertopán (* 1956) deals with the fate of Jewish immigrants to Paraguay in El callejón oscuro (2010) (Eng. “The dark alley”, 2012). In the Barrio Palestina of Asunción, immigrant families who had come to Paraguay before the First World War and only spoke Yiddish, but also homeless emigrants who fled Europe from Hitler lived in close proximity to long-established residents.
To this day, Paraguay has remained a blank spot on the map of Latin American literature for German-speaking countries (unlike France, where even some volumes of poetry have been translated). In view of the relatively homogeneous mestizo majority of the population, there are neither ethnic minorities who speak up in literary terms, nor were transcultural influences literarily effective (apart from those indicated in Gertopan's book). The traditional separation between the two written languages of the country is only partially abolished in some works by the younger generation. Jorge Kanese (* 1947), poet, doctor and victim of torture during the Strössner dictatorship, amalgamated (also under the names Jorge Canese and Xorxe Kanexe) in his texts Spanish, Portuguese, and Guaraní. This slang of the tri-border triangle Argentina-Brazil-Portugal, combined with an aesthetic of the ugly and pornographic elements, he sets against the normative power of national culture. In a German translation of his poems (“Die Freuden der Hölle”, Wiesbaden 2013), this hybrid language is reproduced using a German-Turkish language mix.
Newer literature on Guaraní
Susy Delgado (* 1949) writes stories and poems in Guaraní and Spanish. Longer texts such as the novels by Mauro Javier Lugo Verón, Hugo Centurión's novel Pore'ÿ rape (2016) or Arnaldo Casco's novel Tatukua (2017) are now appearing more frequently. More recently, coordinated efforts to revitalize Guaraní literature have become more important. In May 2018, for example, there was a meeting of authors who are trying to develop the Guaraní novel.
literature
- Hugo Rodriguez-Alcalá: Historia de la literatura paraguaya. Mexico City 1970.
- Brockhaus literature. Vol. 3: OG-Z. Mannheim 1988, p. 44 f.
- anthology
- José A. Friedl Zapata (ed.): Modern storytellers of the world: Paraguay. Erdmann, Stuttgart 1994.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ First modern edition: Historia Argentina del Descubrimiento, Población y Conquista de las Provincias del Río de la Plata Ed .: Pedro de Angelis, Buenos Aires 1836.
- ↑ Ingnacio Talesca: Historia of Paraguay , Panguin Random House Chile, 2015.
- ↑ Ruben Bareiro Saguier: Guarani: rhetoric and reality. In: Index on Censorship 3/1987, pp. 32-34.
- ↑ The meaning of Ayvu Rypta on www.musicaparaguaya.org (Spanish)
- ↑ Brief information on abc.com.py
- ↑ Audio samples on lyrikline.de
- ↑ Prevén panel con destacados escritores on adndigital.com.py, May 11, 2018