EN BUSCA DE UN PAÍS INTERIOR: LA NOVELA LÍRICA VANGUARDISTA EN GILBERTO OWEN, ROSAMEL DEL VALLE Y HUMBERTO SALVADOR

Abstract

Scholars have shown a tendency to analyze the so-called “historical avant-garde” from a perspective of "shock". This vanguardist gesture seeks to destabilize a mode of thinking and doing art in the early part of the twentieth century. If there is indeed an inevitable initial historical moment when the avant-garde becomes iconoclastic and distinguishes themselves in a patricidal gesture, there must exist another moment when the contributions of the avant-garde can be seen to challenge not only the formal aspects of the cultural tradition, but also its contents. Few authors have considered the avant-garde writings in dialogue with a tradition that began in the nineteenth century or with other contemporary aesthetics —often opposed in style and approach.

One purpose of this work is to locate other aesthetic affinities with the avant-garde movement to better define how they differ and create their own genealogies as well as enter into dialogue with each other. In order to achieve this I propose a reading of the context in which one can see the necessity to seek a new expression for the spiritual demands of the time. One of these new spiritual demands is addressed by the so-called lyrical novel, which can be considered as a subgenre of the literary vanguards. Thus, by analyzing three Latin American writers: Gilberto Owen (Mexico, 1904-1952), Rosamel del Valle (Chile, 1901-1965) and Humberto Salvador (Ecuador, 1909-1982) and their avant-garde lyrical novels written between 1928 and 1931, I will identify what can be considered new, which elements characterize these novels, and how their content challenges the traditional narrative genre and creates new sensibilities.

The avant-garde fundamentally breaks with the aesthetics of representation, leading to broader ontological, epistemological, and political ruptures. The aim of avant-garde literature is to regain the dynamic aspect of reality that was lost through the domination of rationalism. We are able to explore this re-appropriation through unique approaches to the elements of imagination, the occurrence (or not) of events, and experience and see how the authors were able to contribute to the radical critique of aesthetic beliefs and notions of reality at the beginning of the twentieth century.