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Essay in Venezuela
Cesia Ziona Hirshbein*
Some preliminary considerations are required on the gender, since if many do try to find some significance, some frontier or specification in it, it would seem as if essay were a form of expression having no limits nor precise definition. In his literature Dictionary, Shipley affirms that "it has never been exactly determined what essay really is". In effect, essay behaves as a chameleon, it tends to adopt whatever form is more suitable to it. Flexible, subjective, with a construing, reflecting nature -and where the reader's participation is most specially present- accepts any kind of literary resource and even any them from the multiple and infinite veins of human knowledge. It was said in 1580 by Montaigne -who, as a matter of fact used for the first time the word Essais under its modern meaning-: "I pick up at random any theme appearing before me. All are equally good to me… I penetrate it, not with amplitude but the greatest possible depth…". Hence in essay all depends on the approach, not on the theme, since it is the author with his wit, his talent and style who builds interest on the theme. This is why it is fair to refer to essay as "prose of ideas", sometimes poem in prose, in view of the fact that the ideas in it must thus transfigure as images, visions, life experiences to transcend, and at the same time be differentiated from, the article, the treaty, chronicle or a monography. In this sense essay is literature even when it does not have a literary theme. It is thus evident that this so called "original reflection", has been in Spanish America and in Venezuela one of the most important expressions of national literary creation, thought and culture. The gender's most remote origins in Spanish America move to colonial times. Some Cróniquas de Indias [Chronicles of the Indies] may be considered as essays, mostly those allowing for some kind of literary relationship. We have Christopher Columbus (c. 1451-1506) with his letters, navigation logs and brief relations, also the Naufragios y comentarios [Shipwrecks and Commentaries] by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1507-155-9) and Historia verdadera de la Nueva España [The true history of New Spain] by Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1496-1585), a soldier of Hernán Cortés. There is special importance in Los Comenarios reales [Royal commetaries] of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), a métis, the son of a Extremadura captain and Inca princess and the Nueva crónica y buen gobierno [New chronicle and good government] by the Peruvian Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala (c. 1534-…) among other. We must warn that these chronicles were written without any confessed literary purpose. One finds other important examples of colonial prose in the baroque writings of the Colombian Hernando Domínguez Camargo, also in the famous Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz [Answer to Sister Filotea de la Cruz] (Mexico, 1691) by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-95), or in the other also baroque writings of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (1645-1700). In some of these texts it is not hard to perceive already the clear America prone attitude that will dominate throughout the entire XIX century and the first half of the XX. The independence struggles bring new ideological and political concerns; these, of course, become Latin American literature's fundamental theme as from 1810, and essay, under its reflecting and conscience creating idiosyncrasy is the most convenient text to express the conflicts and worries of this so convulsive an historical moment. Voices rise to talk about religious tolerance, of individual rights, of intellectual freedom and equalitarian and republican society. The spirit of Illustration is shown in all its reach since there was already available circulation -although covert- of books with a modern orientation: the Encyclopédie, works by Bacon, Descartes, Copernicus, Gassendi, Boyle, Leibniz, Condillac, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Lavoisier, Laplace. Our forefathers are part of this group, first the Liberator Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) not only by his proclamations and his letters, but also by his aesthetic sense so well expressed in some of his texts. The letters and writings of Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) were widely read. Simón Rodríguez, the Liberator's teacher (1771-1854) may be incorporated also to this set of pioneers, with Andrés Bello (1781-1865) for his deep thoughts. These are the forerunners of the writers, thinkers and, more specifically, essay-writers who were in search of mental emancipation. The purpose of independence was not only to cancel colonial governments; these men made efforts also to express a new ideology. Almost all of them are quite fecund and enormously influential men of thought and action. A group of writers follows that we wish to join in a single block because they are chronologically and ideologically integrated to the most significant moment of the America-prone thought's development. Among the first of them we have Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888), Juan Montalvo (1832-89), who besides writing on American reality, also writes Bacon-styled essays with titles such as "De la nobleza" [On nobility], "De la belleza del género humano" [On the beauty of human gender], "Los héroes" [The heroes] (Simón Bolívar), "Los banquetes de los filósofos" [The philosophers' banquets]. We must make special mention also of Eugenio María Hostos (1839-1903) and Manuel González Prada (1844-1918). Let us recall also Manuel Ugarte and the brothers García Calderón. A concern begins to emerge for a typical American expression: an elaborate thinking, not being unlinked from universal contents, in some way reflects a way of being, of reacting in the face of thinks, of the holding of ideas. We have to understand, then, this initial apogee of essay as a phenomenon being associated to the social-historical reality of a continent in search of full political and cultural autonomy from Spain. This explains that modern essay rises in Latin America before it did in the Peninsula: it appears mostly as a need an instrument in the new nations' search of the original identity and expression. This aspect has remained as a permanent constant in the essay and thinking of the most distinguished Hispanic American writers. It is so affirmed by José Miguel Oviedo ( Breve historia del ensayo hispanoamericano, p. 22) [Brief history of Hispanic American essay], "there is a clear line going from Facundo (1845) by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento through Martín Fierro (1872) by José Hernández and from the latter to Don Segundo Sombra (1962) by Ricardo Güiraldes", and he then says that "the influence of El laberinto de la soledad (1950) [The maze of solitude] by Octavio Paz, on Mexican novel, is evident also, as well as Reyes' mastery over some of his country's contemporary poets. There is a live interrelation between the genders being cultivated in Spanish America, and in that network of stimuli and echoes. it is only fair to recognize the seminal role played by essay…" This thinking is interwoven with positivism -it appeared also by late XIX century- and its adoption in Latin America, favored by the success of science theories it was spread over all field of knowledge: philosophy, education, psychology and even artistic and literary expressions, and mostly over the historical. On a parallel course with positivism, modernism earns literary vigor and fosters the work of Venezuelan writer Manuel Díaz Rodríguez (1871-1927), who with its signs full of suggestions publishes Camino de perfección (1908) [Road of perfection], a model of the time's modernist prose. Let us remind that, subsequently, another Venezuelan, Rufino Blanco-Fombona (1874-1944) would write his diary Camino de imperfección [Road of imperfection], in a game of bifurcating destinies paradoxically assembling in a common interest, concern for America. There is a similar America-prone feature in the essays of the Dominican Pedro Henríquez Ureña, the Mexican master Alfonso Reyes and our Mariano Picón Salas. With regard to contemporary Spanish American essay, as poetry was being renewed, prose literature acquired the most varied forms. The predominating ones were essay and fiction -novel and short story. An this essay was continued in some writers around the problem of understanding America, united as it was in protest against the aggressiveness of North American politics that had already been evidenced at the beginning of the century in most of the quoted essay writers; this created a continental outcry of which the importance should not be forgotten when thinking about its importance for the shaping of a Latin American conscience. Essay also opened itself to national politics, and the new course was mostly featured by its aesthetic, literary and sometimes universal nature. Some names: Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980). Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974), Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Octavio Paz (1914). The list is extensive, but it shows the vitality of a gender open both to aesthetic as to social, political and cultural concerns. The independence generation, as we had mentioned, reading texts by Bacon, Descartes, Montesquieu, Voltaire and others, as from 1830 produces combat literature in Venezuela and in the rest of the continent. From the literary standpoint it comprises all of romanticism's meridian and end and classicism's dissolution era. It reaches a stellar destiny with names -as we have seen- going from Simón Bolívar and Simón Rodríguez -"wide resonances of a prophet teacher and a genial pupil", as they are respectively called by Lezama Lima-, to the classic but yet modern Andrés Bello. We must not leave behind during this period the distinguished Arístides Rojas, Fermín Toro, Juan Vicente González, José María Baralt and Cecilio Acosta. It is the time of the of the José Antonio Páez governments, of the brothers Monagas, of federal war and Antonio Guzmán Blanco. A different, distinguished and university-graduate becomes then president, Dr. José María Vargas, the first rector of our Central University of Venezuela. The scenario, in effect, leads to historic transfiguration and shows the challenge of a literature submerging in the humus of war, where in this transition -in a cultural point of view- from baroque to romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is already surprised with features of quite American roots that, without breaking with Hispanic tradition, open new ways for reflection and expression of the moment's most heated issues. One must make clear that these personages have yet not become aware of the essay category, and that they express their ideas in a text that some call "proto-essay", and that to a certain measure is still printed with treaty, article, epistle and oratory. But then they turn into the first links between Venezuela's reflection and literary history. One must add that within this process commencing as from the last century, the essay gender is going to consolidate "as a form of expression by a homogeneous an literally organized group" (José Ramón Medina, 50 años de literatura venezolana [50 years of Venezuelan literature], p. 186) with the writers making up for the first positivist generation: José Gil Fortoul, Lisandro Alvarado, César Zumeta, Luis Razetti, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz, Pedro Manuel Arcaya, Samuel Darío Maldonado, to quote just the most distinguished. They all diversified their investigative interest on typically positivist themes: natural history, biology, anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, philosophy, law and history. And, as José Ramón Medina points out, positivism, this new science penetrating with evident delay in Venezuela's university studies, signifies a healthy impact on Venezuelan general culture. We think mostly of history, sociology, philosophy and literary critique -then not yet drawn apart from essay, a confusion still existing among some writers- enter the world of essay within a new conception using a novel investigative method among Venezuelan intellectuals. This method is going to have its repercussion on the literary field with the advent of modernism. Novel and short story are going to move the field of thetical experimentation -pretending to prove something, what we would call thesis-novel- but creating at the same time a precious bound discourse of not so paused turns and airs bursting over all fields of literature. Essay, however, is going to become the expression where both modernism and positivism will find their fair and true track in the conceptual search for national identity. Essay at these times joins its destiny to two aspects of great interest that will give shape to the essay-oriented expression o the early twentieth century: from one side the influence exerted on Venezuelan writers by the Spanish 98 generation, mostly through essay writers Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno and Azorín, and on another side the proposition of America as a problem. With regard to this second aspect, the unquiet inquiring of a proper culture, history and, finally, identity, is a search oscillating between hope and an unfortunate pessimism. Pessimism comes to us from what the Cuban poet Lezama Lima calls the inferiority complex, "to believe that its expression (American expression) is not the reached form, but a matter of problem, something to be solved", ("Mitos y cansancio clásico"[Myths and classical fatigue], in La expresión americana [American expression] p. 27). A national frame is being structured tied to the names of Rodó, Mariátegui, Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes and Pedro Henríquez Ureña among others. We thus have, among the first ones, José Gil Fortoul (1862-1941), who boards sociological research in order to arrive to a positivist interpretation of Venezuelan history. A testimonial that is mostly reflected in his book El hombre y la historia [Man and history]. It is worth noticing that Gil Fortoul did a good work also as a historian of Venezuelan literature in its essay form. A generation companion of Lisandro Alvarado, disconcerting by his great ability to encompass several fields of knowledge at the same time. He is his generation's polygraph and was attracted by the most disperse themes and motives, but at the same time grounded on a solid culture. He expressed his ideas in the most varied essays, among which Los delitos políticos en la Historia de Venezuela [Political crimes in Venezuelan History] and Neurosis de hombres célebres [Neurosis of celebrated men] point out. We have already quoted Rufino Blaco Fombona; we must, however, add that his essay writing was quite important during the period, not only by his ability to review but also because he was able to treat in depth, within great dedication, both Venezuelan historical and literary themes. On top of this, he was an enthused Bolivarian: his international effort do diffuse our Liberator's is widely known. Among his most important essays we have El espejo de tres fase [The three phase mirror] and La espada de Samuray [The Samurai sword]. Following this era's picture we have César Zumeta (1860-1955) who exceeds in the cultivation of well cared, logical prose, seeking to discuss and determine the philosophical an aesthetic values that influenced Venezuelan literature of his times. Another writer trying to delimitate his generation's aesthetic and philosophical ideas is Luis López Méndez (1861-1891), the master of an enviable style, even in his short newspaper articles, as revealed in the works of his book Mosaico de Política y Literatura [Mosaic of Politics and Literature]. He prefers critical essay or aesthetic reviewing. The essays of Laureano Vallenilla Lanz (1870-1936) are going to be polemical as to the sociological inquiry and the country's historical definition; the same applies to Pedro Manuel Arcaya (1874-1958). In both of them, the scientific rigor proclaimed by positivism seems to be occasionally tainted by political passion or interest. We have also Pedro Emilio Coll (1872-1947), Santiago Key Ayala (1874-1959) and Jesús Semprúm (1882-1931). All of them poets and narrators joining verbal preciosity to the time's essay expression. Two magazines are the vehicles of expression for these essay writers, as for all the modernist inclined works: El Cojo Ilustrado and Cosmópolis. Let us now move to the 1918 generation, historically covering a quite wide period. Changes begin to appear in the gender although they are not structural. The concern for the destiny of "our America" is still present in this new generation's writers, but with a more nationalistic addition -in the good sense of the word-. "They feel pain for Venezuela", as one of them said and they feel the need to explain and analyze the Venezuelan social-political crisis within a Latin American context. At the same, time, however, among speculation of a historical, political and social nature, there is a weaving of some new literary and cultural themes, the result of these creators' aesthetic tremors. We will quote in the first place Julio Planchart (1885-1948) and Luis Correa (1888-1942). The former cooperated with a magazine, La Alborada, bringing enlightening works; many of his essays are on this generation's writers. His Estudios críticos [Critical studies] bent on themes and problems of a literary and cultural order. Luis Correa with his book Terra Patrum distinguishes himself for his work diffusing Venezuelan literary tradition. Enrique Bernardo Núñez (1895-1964) who besides his recognized performance as a novelist. surprises with the penetration of his historical and biographical essays. The following are some of his titles: Don Pablos en América, El Hombre de la Levita Gris, Juan Francisco de León o la Rebelión contra la Compañía Guipuzcoana, Miranda o el tema de la Libertad, Viaje al país de las máquinas, La ciudad de los techos rojos, Bajo el Samán and Una ojeada al mapa de Venezuela [Don Pablos in America, The Man with the Gray Frock-coat, Juan Francisco de León or the Rebellion against the Guipuzcuan Company, Miranda or the theme of Freedom, A Travel to the machines country, The city with the red roofs, Under the Rain Tree and a Glimpse at the Venezuelan map]. The same historical and biographic trend is observed in Augusto Mijares (1897-1979) with his texts La interpretación pesismista de la sociología hispanoamericana and Hombres e ideas en América [The pessimistic interpretation of Spanish American sociology and Men and ideas in America]. His last work El Libertador [The Liberator], is considered as a fundamental contribution to our hero's biography and interpretation. Another essay writer devoted most of his life to the study of two of the most salient aspects of our origins, evolution, destiny and transformation as a nationality, it was Mario Briceño Iragorry (1897-1858). His biographies respond to this same spirit who always tried to set on the Venezuelan people's tradition and historical deeds his most firm expedient for progress, as affirmed by José Ramón Medina, Literary critique had also a most consequent and vigorous student in Rafael Angarita Arvelo (1898-1971). His Historia y crítica de la novela en Venezuela [History and criricism of Venezuelan novel] is a contribution to this gender's judgment and evaluation in Venezuela. Among the last of this period, in chronological terms, we must mention also José Nucete Sardi (1897-1972), who in the field of national historiography has accomplished a significant work with literature and art themes, as he did it also with the constant and attractive gender of biography. Some of his most known essays are: El escritor y civilizador Simón Bolívar, Cuadernos de Indagación e impolítica, Notas sobre la pintura y la escultura en Venezuela and Huellas en América [Simon Bolívar the civilizer and writer, Notebooks for inquiry and non politics, Notes on painting and sculpture in Venezuela, and Footprints in America]. Arturo Uslar Pietri, who recently turned ninety, has a wide audience both domestically as abroad. Also an outstanding novelist, his production is quite important in the field of essay and it encompasses the literary and historical , the political and economic, all this revealing that he is fully one of the most distinguished personalities of our current culture. We thus have: Letras y Hombres de Venezuela, De una a otra Venezuela, Apuntes para retratos, La ciudad de nadie and Las Nubes [Venezuelan Letters and Men, From one Venezuela to another, Picture sketches, Nobody's city, and The Clouds]. We insert here also the name of Luis Beltrán Guerrero (1914), who keeps a permanent live pen to write his American prone, aesthetic, living, poetic literary impressions and reflections, all collected in the infinite series of Candideces [Candid things] still being written. This picture covers the first fifty years of the twentieth century, that we close -conventionally- with the most important figure of Mariano Picón Salas (1901-1965). Without refraining from brilliant incursions into other genders, such as that of biography or novel, Picón Salas is mostly considered an essay writer. Penetrating into the best line of contemporaneous culture, he is, without discussion, our top essay writer of the period. As Richard Latcham says in the foreword to his Ensayos Escogidos [Selected essays], "few continental minds hold a clearing power such as that of Picón Salas…;, and he continues "In his novels and essays, in his chronicles and construing schemes of social and historical reality, the seduction of graceful style and austere thinking confound each other… his prolific genius as to what is eminently tied to essay and his essay work as such is the result of a heroic vocation (p. XXI). We must mention his essays bound in Comprensión de Venezuela and Los últimos días de Cipriano Castro [Understanding of Venezuela and Cipriano Castro's last days]. So much culture and maturity has sowed its seed, Picón Salas' work has been widely and deeply revaluated by the new generation of young essay writers who discover and recognize in him the father of current essay writing. One of the last and most complete works is that by Simón Alberto Consalvi titled Profecía de la palabra, vida y obra de Mariano Picón Salas [Prophecy of word, life and work of Mariano Picón Salas]. The explanation of current time's extension becomes necessary, even if it is only to point out some trends and names, Hence the lightness of an approach, one we do more with questions and interrogations than with answers. Yet it would be daring too much to submit assertions at a moment when the work is still being done. What is immediate, what is current does not allow for a construing or set perspective, to be acquired only through space-time distancing. Thus if the essay gender is the vehicle by excellence -in Latin America and Venezuela- to express concern of a political-social order, does current essay express such concern or does it rather tend to what is personal?, is it part of national conscience or is it divorcing it?, currently, is there continuity or are there structural changes in this gender?… We may speak mostly of some continuity coming from the seventies to present time -there was a short parenthesis between the fifties and sixties. We also catch by surprise the present essay writer concerned -as before and always- with national life, There has never been a divorce in our countries between artist and life. Life and art articulated in the marrow of culture. Some changes may have been noted: from the America-prone thinking of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century to a rather more nationalist one of the mid century, and finally, reaching present time when it goes from what is personal to address, inexorably, what is political and national. Self awareness to be able to become aware, as in an extraordinary spiral, a an outward process is created. These are -as always- conscience-building fields, it is the time for balancing, hence the proliferation of creators devoted to essay and literary investigation. The list becomes necessary, but facing the hazard of any selection. Let us start with Juan Liscano, concerned with culture, national identity and spirituality, as expressed mostly in his essay-styled book of 1977 Espritualidad y literatura: una relación tormentosa [Spirituality and literature: a stormy relationship]. Guillermo Sucre and Rafael Cadenas, professors at the Central University of Venezuela distinguish themselves for their important work as essay writers. By the first one, his well known book La máscara, la transparencia [The mask, the transparency] (1975) and by the second, mostly a poet, his works Literatura y Vida [Literature and Life] (1972) and the most recent one of 1983, Anotaciones [Annotations] . In all of them -most poetic- the artist is also the man who feels the country within himself. The sensible José Balza is one of the most recognized among the new generations of Venezuelan creators, with a strong sense of the aesthetic approach we must mention Lectura transitoria (sobre Rafel Cadenas), El fiero (y dulce instinto terrestre) and the Ensayos invisibles [Provisional reading (on Rafael Cadenas), The fierce (and sweet terrestrial instinct, and The Invisible essays] showing, by means of an essay and poetry styled text his preferences for music, for bolero, Alfredo Sadel… In the theme of history, a constant in national essay work of all times, Manuel Caballero shows from a political perspective of current times. Among philosophers and essay writers we find Juan Nuño and Ludovico Silva. We must not forget to emtnion Armando Rojas Guardia, Francisco Rivera, Oscar Rodríguez Ortiz, Miguel Angel Campos, Domingo Miliani, Eugenio Montejo. When concluding our journey with these names, it has been in order to show the splendor of essay and its importance in our disquieting cultural history, necessarily expressed by means of this literary gender. Moreover, it responds to the need to germinate an authentically own, original expression. American land where an extraordinary essay flower blooms through writers who legitimize our most original thinning. A thought endeavoring in the search to corroborate our cultural identity and independence. Warning: For more details on the issue -in view of the fact that the journey may not be extended now- readers may communicate with Cesia Ziona Hirshbein at the Institute of Hispanic American Studies, phones: 6930806, 016-6240-146, fax: 6930502 * Cesia Ziona Hirshbein is a researcher and professor (associated) at the Central University of Venezuela, since 199I she
is the Director of the Institute of Hispanic American Studies
at the Faculty of Humanities and Education of the same University.
She follows a line of research in the field of History of Culture.
Her most recent works are on the America-prone thinking of Rufino
Blanco-Fombona (in print). She has published: Historia y
Literatura en Lisandro Alvarado, Los cuadernos del anochecer (collection
of essays), Las eras imaginarias de Lezama Lima, Hemereografía
venezolana (1890-1930), forword to El conquistador
español del siglos XVI by Rufini Blanco-Fombona,
among other. Essay writer and collaborator in literary columns
of several metropolitan newspapers: El Universal, El Nacional
and Ultimas Noticias. |
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