Master of Arts Thesis
Euroculture
University of Groningen
University of Göttingen
June, 2014
Europe as translation: The notion of discrepant travel
in Roberto Bolaño’s short stories
Submitted by:
Lourdes Parra Lazcano U. of Groningen: 2213672 U. of Göttingen: 11330864 Contact details: frida_parra@hotmail.com Supervised by:
Prof. Dr. Hub (H.L.M.) Hermans and Dr. Arndt Lainck
MA Programme Euroculture
Declaration
I, Lourdes Parra Lazcano hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “Europe as translation: The notion of discrepant travel in Roberto Bolaño’s short stories” submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme Euroculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within this text of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the bibliography.
I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.
Table of contents
Introduction
1. Theoretical observations………. 2. Research questions and objectives……….. 3. Justification………. 4. Methodology………...
Chapter 1. Europe as translation
1. 1 Foundational European myth based on translation……….. 1.2 Discrepant and literary figures of trips in the translation………… 1.3 Cultural poles and transculturation……….. 1.4 Voices from the border: Third Space……… 1.5 Voices of the open text: frictionality……… 1.6 From a European city flâneur to a transcultural flâneur traveling through European cities……….. 1.7 Findings………
Chapter 2. Roberto Bolaño in translation
Chapter 3. Analysis of short stories
3.1 “Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva”
3.1.1 Plot of “Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva”………. 3.1.2 The Type of discrepant traveler……… 3.1.3 The Transcultural characters ……… 3.1.4 Voices from the Third Space……… 3.1.5 Frictionality………..
3.2 “Vagabond in France and Belgium”
3.2.1 Plot of “Vagabond in France and Belgium”………. 3.2.2 The Type of discrepant travel………... 3.2.3 The transcultural characters ………. 3.2.4 Voices from the Third Space……… 3.2.5 Frictionality………...
3.3 “Alvaro Rousselot's Journey”
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Introduction
1. Theoretical observations
The Chilean Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has been declared as the most influential writer of the 1950s generation.1 For different reasons, this writer lived in Chile, Mexico and Spain, which, along with his literary knowledge, converted him into a permanent and well-versed traveler. Bolaño is part of the traveling tradition that connected Latin America and Europe, including Martí, Darío, Borges and Cortázar. Nevertheless, Bolaño tried to break from his predecessors by introducing his own poetic art that pays more attention to the topics of the cultural margins – exiles, prostitution, rapes, and forgotten writers, among others – and reframes these topics in his literary center, with locations that interconnect America to Europe and vice verse.
In respect of this interconnection between continents, Clifford, an interdisciplinary
scholar from the University of California, highlights the necessity of thinking about “culture as travel,”2
namely conducting research taking broader areas into consideration: in other words, not only reading about Europe, but Europe in regard to the world. In the case of Bolaño, this can be perceived through his traveling experiences. In Bolaño’s narrative, Europe is not the center of this discussion, but rather the European cultural poles are considered next to the diverse cultural identities from around the world.
However, Clifford remains skeptical about the notion of travel and decides to add the adjective “discrepant,” meaning to include those trips that have not been studied, or those journeys that have not been recognized as a result of violent forces or silenced voices. Clifford identifies four types: limited mobility by personal decision or political problems; detours and returns, which imply travelers who decided to travel abroad with marginal topics; discrepant cosmopolitanisms related to travelers with violent histories who are forced to travel; and hybrid native, a traveler who does not think about returning to the original nation of his/her family.3
1
See Jorge Herralde, Para Roberto Bolaño (Barcelona: El Acantilado, 2005), 12.
2
See James Clifford, “Traveling Cultures” in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (New York, London: Routledge, 1992), 103.
3
5
In this sense, Bolaño becomes an example of a writer who recreates these types of discrepant travelers. Furthermore, three key concepts can be helpful to study this type of travelers: first, transculturalism, because it helps to explain the cultural poles; second, the enunciation from the margins that helps to identify voices that come from the margins; and third, frictionality, related to the openness of the text that metaphorically travels from fiction to diction. Next to the analysis of traveling experiences, the interconnection of these concepts will show the cultural movements and identity the transformations depicted in Bolaño’s narratives. These concepts with by condensed into one term: translation, which can be understood as cultural appropriations, movements and transformations.
Now, each key concept will be briefly introduced. First, the concept of transculturation, which has its origin in Cuban counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (1940) by the anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. Transcultural identities first means to overcome an essentialist perception of cultural authenticity of a single nation, and secondly, to locate the subjects between the polarity of the Self and the Other. In the case of Bolaño, he is a transcultural writer because he was never attached to one specific country and he shows in his writings a permanent present of immigrants, exiles, and travelers living in countries in which they were not born. Nonetheless, this concept is insufficient to study the discrepancies if the silenced cultural identities are not considered. For this reason, the second key concept is Third Space.
Bhabha, a scholar of post-colonial studies, identifies that the post-colonial discourse has left aside subaltern strategies to negotiate and perform his/her identity. To overcome this theoretical problem, he uses the concept of Third Space – a symbolical interactive sphere of social experience whereby peripheral agents enunciate and break the barriers with the cultural centers. In the case of Bolaño, his characters attend to the presence of the subaltern, who enunciate and perform showing different faces of a Modern Europe.
The other important concept in studying discrepant travelers is frictionality, which is important to study the text as an open entity. Ette, a German scholar of Romance languages, describes as 'frictional' a text without fixed borders between the fiction and diction.4 Thus, if the text is a product of a trip, the discourse also takes a journey from one
4
Ottmar Ette, Literatura en movimiento. Espacio y dinámica de una escritura transgresora de frontera en
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text to another. For instance, Bolaño depicts this frictionality when he mixes his own personal life with his alter ego Belano, when he combines poetry with narrative in The
Romantic Dogs, and when he uses dates as testimonies emphasizing the verisimilitude of
his narration.
As a result of the transcultural movements and frictional relations, the Parisian
flâneur – a wanderer and observer of the urban life in Benjamin’s understanding – is only
one face of a previous social reality. In this thesis, a new transcultural and discrepant traveler flâneur is proposed, particularly for the case of Bolaño. In the latter, his characters are closer to a less dichotomous and Eurocentric perspective.5 For instance, they walk more than one city, need transports to travel, enunciate even from a marginal position; and enunciate with frictionality. Therefore, the notion of discrepant travelers, next to cultural poles, Third Space and transculturality, allows attending to an emergent reality of a Europe crossed by different types of movements. However, these movements are not the only consequence; moreover, they also create cultural appropriations and transformations in the agents.
In the specific case of Bolaño, he is a writer who described these transcultural travelers as flâneurs, people in perpetual movement who look for different answers to reality. As a passionate reader of the French symbolist writers, Bolaño considered trips as important to exhibit a reality that crosses from the periphery to the center, which is shown in his writings.6
2. Research questions and objectives
The general question is as following: How do the travelers introduced by Roberto Bolaño in his short stories enunciate Europe as translations, based on the textual and cultural spaces in which the characters are depicted?
The first theoretical chapter seeks to answer the particular question: How is a conceptual model of translation – based on discrepant trips, transculturality, Third Space,
5
See Walter Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life. Essays on Charles Baudelaire (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), 69 and 84.
6
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frictionality, travelers and flâneurs – useful to read narratives located in the European context? The objective of this chapter is to elaborate a conceptual model for translation, taking into consideration discrepant travelers, transculturality, Third Space, frictionality and travelers to reflect upon transcultural literary narratives that have crossed the European cultural spaces.
In the second chapter, the particular question is: Why is it relevant to study Roberto Bolaño as a transcultural and discrepant travel writer who has crossed European textual and cultural spaces? The objective is to study the relevance of Roberto Bolaño in the context of other travel writers, including Bolaño’s profile and the notion of travel in relation to his narrative, with the purpose of identifying characteristics of a transcultural and discrepant traveler writer.
The third chapter focuses on the following question: How do Roberto Bolaño’s
short stories “Mauricio 'The Eye' Silva”, “Vagabond in France and Belgium” and “Alvaro
Rousselot's Journey” depict translation based on the movement and transformation of its characters? The objective of this chapter is to interpret the cultural enunciations of Roberto Bolaño’s short stories in the context of contemporary transcultural, frictional and discrepant transeuropean cultural identities.
3. Justification
The topic of this thesis is relevant because study has been published about the process of transculturation in connection with the Third Space and frictionality in the writings of Roberto Bolaño’s short stories to date. Bolaño has been mainly studied from peripheral spaces (Ríos Baeza, 2011), posmodernity (Bolognese, 2010) and the notion of evil (Lainck, 2014). Likewise, different aspects of his work have been analyzed in the following critical studies, among others: Territorios en fuga: estudios críticos de la obra de Roberto Bolaño (2003); Roberto Bolaño: una literatura infinita (2005); Jornadas homenaje Roberto Bolaño
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Roberto Bolaño, estrella cercana. Ensayos sobre su obra (2012).7 In general, these studies have been based on some interviews and his poetry, as well as his two main novels: The
Savage Detectives and 2666.
In addition to the previous list, Pistas de un naufragio. Cartografía de Roberto
Bolaño by Chiara Bolognese (2010) is an important work for this thesis, because the author
conducts a typology of Bolaño’s trips by dividing Bolaño’s types of journeys into metic, nomad, escape, fail, initiatory and existential.8 Adding to this, Claude Fell has studied the characters of Belano and Lima of The Savage Detectives from the perspective of errancy and nomadism.9 The categories proposed by these two scholars will be useful for the analysis of the short stories. Likewise, Ríos Baeza has studied the trips and evolution of Belano or B – the alter ego of Bolaño. In terms of this thesis, his analysis will be useful to depict the transculturality and frictionality in Bolaño’s alter ego. 10
Likewise, Bolaño’s short stories have been studied, among others, by the following scholars: Peñate Rivero has studied Llamadas telefónicas, centering his attention on “Sensini” – emblematic for the figure of the unknown writer – and “The Grub” – a key example of the masculine confidences.11 However, these two short stories are not a central part of this thesis. Likewise, Montes has studied the short stories of Putas asesinas, focusing on the crisis identity that the characters experience from a postmodern theoretical
7
See the critical studies mentioned in the bibliography. 8
See Chiara Bolognese, Pistas de un naufragio. Cartografía de Roberto Bolaño (Córdoba: Alción Editora, 2010), 185-221. Cfr. See Chiara Bolognese, “Huídas y búsquedas en la literatura de Roberto Bolaño,” El viaje
en la literatura hispanoamericana: el espíritu colombino, ed. Sonia Mattalia, Pilar Celma and Pilar Alonso
(Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2008), 2008, 465- 476.
9 Claude Fell, “Errancia y escritura en Los detectives salvajes: viaje a los confines de la poesía,” in Roberto
Bolaño. La experiencia del abismo, Fernado Moreno, ed. (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Lastarria, 2011),
153-166.
10 Felipe A. Ríos Baeza, “Arturo Belano: El viajero en el tiempo,” in Roberto Bolaño: Ruptura y violencia en
la literatura finisecular, Felipe Ríos Baeza, ed. (Mexico City: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla,
Ediciones Eon, 2010), 219-252. Cfr. Sergio Marras, El héroe improbable (cómo Arturo Belano siempre quiso
ser Benno von Archimboldi) (Santiago de Chile: RIL editores, 2011).
11
Julio Peñate Rivero, “El territorio literario de Roberto Bolaño en Llamadas telefónicas,” in Roberto Bolaño,
estrella cercana. Ensayos sobre su obra, López de Abiada, José Manuel, and Augusta López Bernasocchi,
ed. (Madrid: Verbum, 2012), 323-342. See a selection of stories from Putas Asesinas (2001) and Llamadas
Telefónicas (1997) in Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth, tr. Chris Andrews (London: Vintage Books,
2008 [2007]. Likewise, see stories from Putas asesinas and Llamadas Telefónicas not collected in Last
9
perspective.12 Other studies about Bolaño’s short stories include Espinosa studying the marginality of the characters in Putas asesinas13 and Alvarado Silva and Romero Luna studying the topic of the exile in “Mauricio 'The Eye' Silva.”14
The main difference with these previous studies is that the topic of traveling is combined with the transcultural and Third Space in this thesis, giving as a result a translation. Furthermore, the Third Space approach is critical to the postmodernist ideas, because according to Bhabha, posmodernism only celebrates the ruptures but does not recognize the silenced voices. Besides, the transcultural and Third Space approach is also critical about the position of the exile, if the latter is only understood as a differentiation between the Self and the Other.15
Given that the aim of this work is to read about Europe from the margins, it is important what the silenced and unrecognized voices say about Europe. In this sense, with his short stories this writer offers a different look into the European cities: the view of a Latin American living in Europe for more than twenty years, the view of a writer from the cultural identity in between Europe and America, and the view far from an exoticism or a touristic gaze.
4. Methodology
This thesis incorporates an interdisciplinary theoretical framework in conducting a cultural analysis. The thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, the theoretical approaches to study transcultural literature located in Europe and beyond are discussed. This model is built up taking into consideration the theoretical approaches of Clifford with regard to traveling cultures, Ortiz with transculturation, Bhabha with Third Space, and Ette with frictionality, for which a bibliographical research was conducted.
12
See José Manuel López de Abiada, ed. Roberto Bolaño, estrella cercana. Ensayos sobre su obra (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2012), 323-363. Cristian Montes, “Experiencia, silencio y crisis en Putas asesinas,” in
Roberto Bolaño. La experiencia del abismo, 307-318.
13 See Patricia Espinosa, “Roberto Bolaño: un territorio por armar” in Roberto Bolaño. La escritura como
tauromaquia, Celina Manzoni, ed. (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2006), 127-129.
14
María Selene Alvarado Silva and Francisco Javier Romero Luna, “La influencia del exilio y la construcción del personaje central en 'El Ojo Silva,'” in Roberto Bolaño, estrella cercana. Ensayos sobre su obra, 153-164. 15
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The objective of this chapter is to elaborate a conceptual model for translation, taking into consideration discrepant travelers, transculturality, Third Space, frictionality and travelers to reflect upon transcultural literary narratives that have crossed the European cultural spaces.
Chapter 1. Europe as translation
1. 1 Foundational European myth based on translation
According to Delanty, the idea of Europe has historically been a concept based on oppositions: on the one hand, those who practice Christianity, humanistic values and liberal democracy (Kundera, 1984); and on the other hand, those who are out of these practices and are non-Europeans.1 In this regard, Delanty perceives citizenship as an answer “that does not exclude the stranger.”2
However, he does not see any connection between the Greek mythology and current understanding of European identities. According to his perspective, “Hellas was seen as the land of culture and civilization and beyond it was barbarism.”3
On the contrary, Ette undertakes a different reading of the Greek mythology. He mentions that the foundation of the West can begin with the myth of Europe, because this shows “movement and deterritorialisation”.4
He takes into consideration that Europe – the mythological character – was the initiator of a new genealogy with five characteristics in particular: she was forced to move out of her country; she does not live in her country of origin; she is an immigrant; her descendants are crossbred; and her genealogy cannot be located in a centered and arboreal genealogy.5 Therefore, for Ette, the notion of Europe – the continent – would not be possible without the non- European.
Following the idea of Ette, a brief description of the foundational European myth will be introduced. According to mythology, Europe was a descendant of one of Hera’s priesthoods: Io. The story of Io is that she was seduced by Zeus and converted by him into a white cow to hide his affection. Hera became upset and sent a gadfly to infest the cow,
1
See Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 2. 2 Ibid, 16.
3 Ibid , 19. 4
Ette, Literatura en movimiento…., 400. 5
12
and the latter became a wanderer through the continents of Europe and Asia. Finally, Io, the cow, recovered her original form and stayed in Egypt.
Io gave birth to Epaphus, who became king of Egyptians, and the latter had one daughter, called Libya. Subsequently, Libia had twin sons with Poseidon: Agenor and Belus. Agenor departed to Phoenicia and became king of Tyre, located in Asia on the coastline of the Mediterranean. Likewise, Agenor had three sons: Cilix, Phoenix and Cadmo, and one daughter called Europe, although another version of The Illiad says that Europe was the daughter of Phoenix. Afterwards, Zeus transformed into a white bull to attract Europe and carried her off to Crete. Later on, Europe had three sons: Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthus.
Once in Minos, Europe married the king of Crete, Asterius. Minos, one of Europe’s sons, wanted to become king of Crete; therefore, he asked for help from Poseidon by requesting a bull. Minos promised Poseidon that he would sacrifice the bull but he did not. As a punishment, Mino’s wife, Pasiphae, gave birth to the Minotaur, Asterius. Consequently, Minos locked up Asterius in the Cnossus Labyrinth. Finally, the Minotaur was defeated by the Athenian, Theseus with the support of Ariadne. The latter was daughter of Minos and part of the genealogy of Europe. 6
Ette observes that this foundational European myth can be helpful to think about Europe as a foreigner, an Asiatic woman who later originates the name of Europe as a territory. Furthermore, he reflects upon the symbolism of the city in which the labyrinth was located. A labyrinth becomes a way to interpret the life of the protagonist of these
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mythological stories and their predecessors.7 Thus, the European genealogy becomes a labyrinth that is interconnected and intertwined with the non-European.
The mythological Europe myth is depicted on a map in the following figure.
The myth proceeds that when once in Naxos, Theseus and Ariadne become separated. One version suggests that Dionysus found Ariadne and that Theseus resigns her to Dionysus, whereas another says she was carried off. Dionysus was the son of Semele and Zeus, which Hera was jealous about. For the latter reason, Zeus sent the kid to the nymphs of Nysa (in Ethiopia, beyond Egypt, according to Herodotus). Eventually, Dionysus was sent abroad through Asia and subsequently returned to Greece.8 Dionysus was the God of grape harvest and ritual madness.It is important to note that Semele, Dionysus’s mother, was the daughter of Cadmo and also part of Europe’s genealogy.
A second reading to be introduced in this thesis is that Dionysus was also considered a foreigner and the origin of ecstasy rites. Dionysus’ rites were considered as coming from Minor Asia, from where he imported them into Greece.In particular, in the
7 SeeEtte, Literatura en movimiento…, 399-400.
8 See Apollodorus, The library I, tr. J.G Franzer, iv, 19, and 321. In Homer, The Illiad, 310, there is a brief mention of Semele. Another version says that Dionysus was son of Persephone, queen of the lower world, and that the name in Egypt for Dionysus is Osiris. The cult to Dionysus is also mentioned in Herodotus, Books
I-II, 337, 425, 451 and 453. Another historical approach suggests that his cult spread to Asian Minor in the
form of the cult of Bacchus. See Arthur Evans, The God of Ecstasy: Sex Roles and the Madness of Dionysus (New York: St. Marin’s Press, 1998), 65-66.
Figure 1. The myth of Europe in a map.
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Greek tragedy The Bacchae, Dionysus is the stranger who appears in the city. According to Lehan, Dionysus can be traced next to the marginal parts of the city, the carnival, the stranger, and the authority representation of the uncanny.9 Lehan realizes an analysis of the city in literature and traces different European novels in which the Dionysus myth is present, such as Dracula.10
Returning to the European genealogy myth, Belus, the other twin to which Libya gave birth, stayed in Egypt and became father of the twins: Aegyptus and Danaus. With different women, Aegyptus had fifty sons and Danaus had fifty daughters. Due to political problems, Danaus and his daughters were exiled from Egypt to Argos. Later on, Danaus’ daughters were forced to marry the fifty sons of Aegyptus, who they killed following the instructions of their father. For this reason, most of them became condemned to the Tartarus – the deep abyss of Greek mythology – where they have a jug to fill a bathtub with leaky vessels,11 aside from Hypermnestra, who stayed with Lynceus in Argos.12
It is important to note that Europe was also part of the genealogy of the Danaids. Furthermore, according to Apolodoro, the Danaids Automate, Amymone, Agave and Scaea were also daughters of Europe and Danaus.To sum up, Europe had three sons with Zeus as a result of his kidnapping from Tyre to Crete, as well as four daughters with Danaus, who came exiled from Egypt to Argos.
A third reading of the European genealogy is given by Kristeva, who suggests that the first foreigners of the Western civilization are the Danaids from Egypt. She resembles
9 See Richard Lehan, The city in literature. An intellectual and cultural history (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998), 6, 19-20.
10 Ibid, 8. 11
For further references, see Geoffrey W. Bakewell, Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women: The Tragedy of
Immigration (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 76-77.
15
her crossings and concludes that these women were double foreigners, given that first they had to leave Egypt, and secondly, they were out of the tradition of marriage.13
These three readings show that the myths are connected with trips movements. Europe can be considered a metic from the Greek μετα that denotes change and οικος, which can be related to a house.14 She was someone without a fixed residence or nation, as well as being a migrant. The same occurred to her descendants, the Danaids, who became wanderers, or Dionysus, who was considered the stranger, the God that imported his rites due to his journeys across Asia, to whom Europe’s niece (Ariadne) became related.
Therefore, Europe and her descendants were foreigners, exiles and their life paths were not straight but rather labyrinthian. In this regard, Kristeva mentions that the notion of the foreigner ends when everybody recognizes him or herself as a foreigner. By contrast, the construction of the foreigner begins when the awareness of the difference between the Self and the Other is present.15
In the following figure, the genealogy of Io and his descendants is schematized in regard to Europe, Dionysus and the Danaids.
13 See Julia Kristeva, Étrangers á nous-memes (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1988), 59-61.
14 See “metic”, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), http://www.oed.com/. Accessed 04/05/2014.
15
16 1. Sarpedon 3. Minos: King of Crete 4. Europe: daughter of Agenor. Lived in Tyre in Minor Asia (Phoenician civilization). Kidnapped to Crete by Zeus as a white bull or by the Minoics. In Minos, she married the king Asterius.
She has three sons.
2. Rhadamanthus
In Crete lived the Minotaur Asterion in the Cnossus Labyrinth
Defetead by the Athenian, Theseus with the support of
Ariadne (daughter
of Minos)
Danaus has fifty daughters with different women, called danaids. Automate, Amymone, Agave and Scaea were daughters of Europe. They are exiled from Egypt to Argos and forced to marry the fifty sons of Egypt, to whom they kill.
They become condemned, except for Hipermnestra Epafo: Son of Io and king of Egyptians Libya: Epafo’s daughter. Mother of twins The twin Agenor departed to Phoenicia. King of Tyre. He has three sons and a daughter 2. The twin Belus stayed in Egypt and has twins Aegyptus Danaus King of Egypt that has fifty sons. 1. Cilix Semele: daughter of Cadmo (King of Thebes)
Dionysos: son of Semele and Zeus. He
grows up in Nysa. After traveling across Asian places, he returns to Greece
In Naxos, Ariadne stays with
Dionysus Origin of the
Persian-Hellene confrontations
Io: Seduced by Zeus and
converted in wanderer cow through Europe and Asia until she arrives to Egypt
3. Phoenix
2.Cadmo
Figure 2. Genealogy of Io and his descendants in regards to Europe, Dionysus and the Danaids. For
main references see Apollodorus, The library I, , 133-135, 299, 303-305; Hesiod, Hesiod The Homeric Hymns
17
As can be observed from the figure above, Europe, the Danaids and Dionysus can be read as the Others, although if a step further is given, their myths can be read as well as transcultural translations performed in marginal cultural spaces, particularly taking into account the topics of the rape, murders, death, madness, ecstasies and the importance of the wander trip that interconnect their mythological stories. These topics depict another face of the Ancient world as a basis of a discrepant Modern world.
Moreover, these three mythological characters transfer cultural meanings to Greece. According its Latin etymological origin, translation can be related to the act of transfer in three senses: 1) transferring a meaning (linguistic and cultural); 2) transferring from one place to another one or moving; and 3) a transfer that performs a transformation and creates a change.16 The translation in these Ancient myths is the result of their transfers from one place to another, whereby they generated changes in the places they stayed (descendants, rites, among others).
According to Ette, the movement is the main aspect through which to understand the cultural exchanges across world literature.17 However, for this thesis, the concept of translation is more accurate, given that it helps to incorporate the meanings, the movement as well as the changes that this type of performance allows. In addition, the contributions of a theoretical approach to the Third Space and the transculturation will be studied to grasp these changes. In this regard, Bhabha also plays with the meaning of the word translation, mentioning that he likes to reflect more about the “transnational and translational”18 imagined communities rather than those nationalist communities. He enunciates this translational approach in the sense of meaning and movement that creates hybrid communities.
Thus, in order to break this dichotomy of European identity based on the Self and the Other, the European foundational myth questions the notion of European purity. Accordingly, this hybridism, product of journeys and movements, also has an impact on literature. For this reason, from this moment onwards, European literature will be explained
16
See “translate”, Oxford English Dictionary. 17
18
as a consequence of translations. Now, the importance of the discrepant trips as part of the translation will be introduced.
1.2 Discrepant and literary figures of trips in the translation
Traveling has been present in literature since the Ancient times, with the best examples found in the Greek mythology as studied before. Indeed, the most recreated journey in the artistic world is the topic of Ulysses.19 This is based on the Greek epic poem The Odyssey, which describes the ten-year return trip of Odysseus (Ulysses in Roman) after the Trojan War, as well as the changes that he faces after arriving at Ithaca.20
A second example is the poem from Medieval times, The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri. In this writing, the narrator describes a journey that crosses hell, purgatory and paradise.According to Bloom, the most interesting recreation of Ulysses is done in Canto 26, in which Ulysses recounts his last trip to the Roman poet Virgil. 21
Following this path, Ulysses, written by James Joyce, includes textual connections to the journey of Odysseus. However, this trip is undertaken by Leopold Bloom across a Modern Dublin.22 A different example is The Fall by Camus, in which Jean Baptiste Clamence narrates his life as judge-penitent. He recounts his life as a journey from having a perfect life in Paris to the metaphorical hell when he realizes that his life is meaningless and futile.23
Another example from the beat generation is the emblematic On the Road (1957), written by Jack Kerouac, narrated in a first person character who narrates his trips full of excesses, like using drugs and alcohol, across the United States and Mexico.24
Subsequently, other examples are Nine Dantesque essays (1982) and the book of conferences, Seven nights (1980) by Borges, in which the Canto 26 is explained. However,
19 Hostettler mentions in this regard to William Stanford, The Ulysses Theme: A study in the Adaptability of a
Traditional Hero (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1992), 6-7. See Milene Hostettler-Sarmiento, “Búsqueda,
errancia y degeneración en Los detectives salvajes,” in Roberto Bolaño. Estrella cercana. Ensayos sobre su
obra, 126.
20 See Homer, The Odyssey, tr. Rodney Merrill (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002).
21 See Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Volume I, Inferno, ed. and tr. Robert M. Durling (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1996), 403-415. Cfr. Hostettler-Sarmiento, “Búsqueda, errancia y degeneración en Los detectives salvajes,” 126.
22 See James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. Hans Walter Gabler et. al. (New York City: Vintage Books: 1986 [1922]). 23 See Albert Camus, The Fall, tr. Justin O’Brien (New York City: Vintage Books, 1963 [1956]).
24
19
Ulysses of Borges is not based on the perspective of Homer, but rather Ulysses’ depiction written by Alighieri.25
Having shown relevant examples of trip for literature, it is now necessary to introduce a theoretical approach. In terms of traveling and its connection with literature, Ette mentions there are four crucial moments in any writing regarding trips, which can be identified in any literary narration where a journey is present. The first, the farewell, this means that the writer mentions his/her emotions or experiences about the time when s/he was leaving a specific place.
The second moment is the culmination, which this implies that the trip as experience becomes the core of the narration. Third is the arrival, which means that the traveler reached the place he was looking for. Finally, in fourth place is the return, when the traveler returns to the previous place.26
Another aspect to take into consideration regarding a trip is the type of movements that are enunciated. Ette identifies five main figures. First, the circle, which means going to one place and returning to the same place. Secondly, the sway, implying a movement between two places; for instance, Turkish immigrants in Germany who revisit to their family hometown every holiday before subsequently returning to their daily lives in a German town.
Thirdly, the line, which signifies that the traveler only performs a departure from one place but s/he never mentions his/her return. For instance, the traveler passes away when s/he arrives; s/he decides not to return, or the importance of the experience is consumed. In fourth place is the figure of the star, which involves visiting different places but having a single point of departure for all of them.
The last figure Ette proposes is the jump, reflecting an absurd journey without a departure and arrival, offering the example of Jacques the Fatalist and his Master written by Denis Diderot. In this trip, the anecdotes, interruptions and stories are more important
25 For Nine Dantesque essays see Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-fictions, ed. and tr. Eliot Weinberger, tr. Esther Allen and Suzanne Jill Levine (London: Penguin, 2000), 280-283. For the other one see Jorge Luis Borges, Seven nights, tr. Eliot Weinberger (New York: New Direction Publishing Books, 1984), 9-23. For a further interpretation of this see María Clara Iglesias, “Borges y sus tres interpretaciones del canto de Ulises en el Infierno de Dante”, MLN 127, no. 2 (2012), 283-284, accessed 15 May 2014, doi: 10.1353/mln.2012.0060.
20
than the point of arrival.27 A new figure, not mentioned by Ette and introduced in this thesis, can be called the web. This can be particularly observed in Bolaño’s short stories, where the characters can visit one place, move to another one, return to the previous place, before subsequently moving again to another place. Such types of journeys can depict wanderings, but also interconnection between the places.
In this regard, Clifford proposes studying “culture as travel.”28 However, in contrast to Ette, he makes a differentiation in the type of trips, analyzing that not all the trips can be considered the same. In his understanding, there is a necessity to go beyond a Western experience of traveling that is related to heroes, education, science, adventure, masculinity or a privileged social-cultural location.29 Pratt and others also identified that traveling can be mostly related to imperialist positions whereby white men and with a gaze of innocent appearance have created Eurocentric or ethnocentric discourses.30
However, for Clifford, studying culture as travel can help to comprehend how the histories are part of a social construction and that interferences and interactions among cultures have played an important role due to travelers. An important characteristic that Clifford notes is that the way of studying traveling needs to become more sensitive to those trips that have not been recognized.
Afterwards, Clifford calls discrepant travelers to those who question the given facts about local natives. In his perception, natives and travelers can be intertwined.31 Despite not grouping them in a list, he mentions their different types, as follows.
In first place are people with limited physical mobility, by choice or repressive forces. This means that there are people who cannot travel with transport due to personal or political motives, but instead use mental or communicative interactions. Examples of these
27
See Ibid, 57-63. 28
See James Clifford, “Traveling Cultures” in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (New York, London: Routledge, 1992), 103.
29
See Ibid, 105-107.
30
Ibid. Cfr. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Traveling, writing and transculturation (London, New York: Routledge, 2003 [1992]), p. 6; Patrick Holland and Huggan Graham, Tourists with typewriters. Critical
Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), 24.
21
types of travelers are individuals who use mass media, communicate with tourists or interact with armies.32
Secondly, there are discrepant travelers of detours and returns. One such example that Clifford offers is related to the manner in which people from former colonies travel to Europe, like the Surrealist writers living in Paris from 1920 up to 1930. A specific case is Alejo Carpentier, who travels from Cuba to Paris and then back to America.33
Thirdly, the discrepant cosmopolitans related to “violent histories of economic, political and cultural interactions.”34
In this regard, Clifford provides the example of colonial, neo-colonial and postcolonial circuits, diaspora, borderlands, exiles, migrant cultures and people without travel writings. Specific examples that he mentions include the trans-Atlantic enslavement produced interconnected black cultures such as African-American, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-British; the border culture between the United States and Mexico; or the people from Haiti who live in Brooklyn but regularly go back to Haiti.35
The last type is the hybrid native, which means someone who has one nationality at birth or family of a certain nationality yet feels closer to the second nationality that s/he adopts. For instance, someone with an Indian background who moves to The United States of America and then s/he feels closer to his or her new country than to India.36
According to Clifford, the notion of travel cannot “cover all the different displacements and interactions but is a translation term for comparison”.37
For this reason, translation is the core concept for this thesis and traveling is a key element. The latter concept connects the movements among places and has an incidence in the cultural and literary transformations. For instance, in the case of Bolaño’s short stories, the trip in his characters is mainly discrepant, due to the motives and problems that the diverse types of travelers face – this will be studied in more depth in the next chapter. For now, it is important to acknowledge the new centers and peripheries that have been created and how they are broken as a consequence of trips.
22
Another aspect that Ette mentions is the relation between journeys and space. Following Claude Lévi-Strauss (Tristes Tropiques, 1955), Ette adds other elements to studying this relation. First, he mentions the importance of making the reading attractive; therefore, fictional elements are added to the narration. The second aspect is the intertextual – connections among different texts – and intratextual – connections within the same text. The third aspect is the literary genres and sub genres integrated to the writing; and the last aspect is the cultural space and the cultural poles.38 These elements are crucial for current travel narratives, because it implies that there is dynamism among cultures and that the influences from a foreign culture are part of the cultural translation in which a society lives.
For the purpose of this thesis, the relation between trip and textual-cultural space is highly important. These types of spaces can be helpful to analyze the enunciations realized by the discrepant travel narratives. For this reason, the transculturation relations will be studied to further grasp the incidence of the travels in culture. The figure below summarizes the concepts studied in this subchapter.
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1.3 Cultural poles and transculturation
The concept of transculturation was coined by the Cuban Fernando Ortiz in 1940 in Cuban
counterpoint: tobacco and sugar. A metaphor for defining transculturation is offered in the
title of the publication, given that Cuban counterpoint is a musical technique in which different subjects argue with music about a certain topic. The form of their interaction is harmonic, although the content is burlesque. Cuban counterpoint has African influences
Discrepant travelers
Translation of linguistic and cultural meanings,
movement and transformation
Culture as travel beyond an elitist-Modern experience of comfort
Types of travelers: 1. Limited mobility 2. Detours and returns 3. Discrepant cosmopolitanisms 4. Hybrid native
Moments of their travel writings
1. Farewell 2. Culmination 3. Arrival 4. Return
Path of their travel
1. Circle (return to the same place) 2. Sway (between 2 places)
3. Line (only a departure)
4. Star (different places from one point of departure) 5. Jump (absurd) 6. Web (various places interconnected; errancy)
In relation to their textual and cultural space
1. Attractive reading 2. Intertextual /intratextul 3. Literary genres (frictionality) 4. Cultural poles (transculturality)
Figure 3. Discrepant travelers. See Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” 103-115 and Ette, Literatura en
movimiento…, 26-33, 42-49, 57-63.
Examples of Greek mythology (e.g. Europe) and literature with the central topic of travel (The Odyssey)
Travel
24
and arrived in Cuba through Canarian immigrants.39 Therefore, Cuban counterpoint is not a pure Cuban technique, but rather a result of trips and cultural influences.
The second metaphor that Ortiz uses to explain transculturation relates to tobacco and sugar (caña). While tobacco is a product exported to Cuba by Christopher Colombus, sugar was imported by Columbus during his second trip to the island. Both products are an important part of Cuban and European history.40 Again, tobacco and sugar represent two forces that interact to create new conditions. It is important to note that these products and the Cuban counterpoint are results of translations, and particularly traveling.
Besides these examples to explain transculturation, Ortiz adds the importance of the cultural poles. According to him, Cuba has influences from at least four different cultures. First, the Iberic culture – Spanish, Andalusian, Portuguese, Galician, Basque, and Catalan – mainly contributes as a result of the Spanish conquest. Secondly, Africans who came to Cuba as slaves during the Spanish conquest contribute their influences. Thirdly, the presence of indigenous people living in the Cuban island, who also suffered a change from the Paleolitic to Neolitic times, according to Ortiz. Therefore, indigenous people had their own movements even before the Spanish conquest. Lastly, Ortiz mentions the influence of immigrant cultures such as those indigenous from various parts of America, Jews, Lusitanians, Anglo-Saxons, French and Americans who are also present in Cuban history.41 Ette has also studied the cultural poles, mentioning that six poles or cultural coordinates have been part of the Latin American literature. Therefore, he goes beyond the Cuban culture. Ette agrees with Ortiz about the Iberic culture, the indigenous and African cultures; although he goes further and adds hybrid cultures that represent the denied or marginal cultural poles and the Greek antiquity’s influences. Finally, he mentions the mass media communication that started in the final third of the nineteenth century in Latin America. 42
The reflection that emerges from these cultural poles is that nations are not close entities. Therefore, the transcultural position implies that a culture is not pure and it is
39
See Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, ed. Enrico Mario Santí (Catedra. Madrid: Cátedra, 2002 [1940]), 25-26.
40 See Ibid, 222. 41
See Ibid, 222-255. 42
25
inscribed in a dynamic history. Despite some cultural poles having been more dominant than others, all of them have interacted and created a contingent culture.43 One example that Ette offers is the avant-garde movement that crossed European literature with different cultural poles in Latin America.44
The figure below explains the different cultural poles that have an influence in Latin American literature.
Lastly, Ortiz criticizes the previous concept regarding culture and introduces his own approach. He considers that the acculturation, the most common concept used in anthropology during the 1940s, implies that there is one superior and one inferior culture.45 As an alternative, he uses the concept of transculturation based on three ideas: acculturation implies that one culture imposes its culture on another, which subsequently acquires it; deculturation implies that one culture loses some of its characteristics when it arrives at a different culture; and neoculturation signifies that the culture introduced in a different place produces a new phenomenon – different from the previous culture. Thus, transculturation
43 Ibid.
44 See Ette, Literatura en movimiento…, 231. 45
Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, 125. Latin America
Figure 4. Cultural poles. See Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, 254-255,
26
describes all the transitive processes from one culture to another.46 In other words, transculturation expresses the diverse phenomena resulting from a “complex cultural transmutation.”47
Furthermore, Cuban counterpoint… has an introduction written by Bronislaw Malinowski in 1940, within which he notices other aspects of transculturation that are not defined by Ortiz. For instance, Malinowski notices that both cultures interact in an active manner to create a new cultural reality, whereby the culture giving information also receives it, and vice versa. For this reason, it is not a one way process.48
The figure below shows the process of transculturation, taking into consideration the different cultural poles that interact within only two cultures. It is important to bear in mind that this can result from harmonic or disruptive relationships. Similarly, the influence of different cultural poles is not limited, meaning that these relations may increase, decrease or change. 46 Ibid, 125 and 260. 47 Ibid, 254. 48 Ibid, 125-126.
Acculturation Deculturation Neoculturation Transculturation n
Figure 5. Transculturation. See Ortiz,Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, 125, 254-255 and
27
The same transculturation process can be applicable to Europe and its literary traditions. In this regard, Ette mentions: “We will therefore have to conceptualize European literature as an ensemble of transcontinental and trans-areal, but also national, regional and local literary languages.49 In other words, the construction of Europe should be read as a process of cultural interchanges that created new cultural realities.
In particular, Ette tells the case of Jorge Semprún (1923-2011), a Spanish writer who wrote mainly in French. In L'écriture ou la vie (1994), Semprún shares his experiences from the time when he lived in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, during which diverse languages and cultures were mixed. Thus, the people living there represented the diverse cultural poles interacting.50
Ette also emphasizes that since the middle of the twentieth century, the novelties and transformations in literature have come from the margins and not from the so-called centers.51 However, “even today, Europeans are not interested about what non-European travelers write about Europe.”52 In this sense, the transcultural narratives from writers who were not born in Europe offer a critical reading, because they can take into consideration the diverse cultures that have crossed the European reality.
Transculturation is an important concept to understand the negotiation of different cultural identities. However, this concept does not give particular weight to the subalterns, those voices that have been historically considered without possibilities of enunciation. A helpful concept to delineate this is Third Space, as places that show enunciation from peripheral agents. For this reason, the next concept to study is related to this concept that complements specific transcultural identities.
1.4 Voices from the border: Third Space
According to Bhabha, “spheres of social experience” represent the space.53 He criticizes the manner in which epistemological theories have studied culture, which he considers to have
49
See Ottmar Ette, “European Literture (s) in the Global Context: Literatures for Europe,” in Literature for
Europe?, ed. Theo d’ haen, Iannis Goerlandt, (Amsterdam, New York City: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2009),
130. 50
See Ibid, 131.
51 See Ette, Literatura en movimiento, 18. 52 Ibid, 19.
53
28
three main consequences: first, dichotomous perspectives are present, such as the First World (Western) vis-à-vis Third World, tradition vis-à-vis modernity, or Self vis-à-vis Other; secondly, progressive and accumulative time becomes the ideal of Modern progress; and thirdly, the final goal is the containment of these dualisms into a hermeneutic circle of totality, which looks for a dialogic resolution of conflicts.54
In terms of these epistemological positions, Bhabha observes three main problems in these epistemological positions: first, the essentialist’s identity looks for authenticity based on race, gender or class; secondly, the creation of a multiculturalist’s positions in which cultures only run in parallel but are not intertwined, or the acknowledgment of cultural diversity based only on the exoticism of the Other; and thirdly, the notion of postcolonial contra-modernity has lost its visibility because voices have been silenced as a result of holistic containment.55
The figure below represents the ideal of Modern progress.
54 See Ibid, 14, 19, 35, 41, 53, 128, 149, 171-178, 184-185, 225. 55 Ibid, 60, 126 and 252. Ideal of Modern Progress: culture as episteme Nation A: First World,
white, liberal democracy, privad, individual, present, North, Modernity, upper, Self Spheres of social experience based on identity designations and inverted polarities
Nation B: Third World,
black, fundamentalist, past, social; theirs, South, lower, tradition, Other
Figure 6. Ideal of Modern progress. See Bhabha, The location of culture, 12- 22, 29, 31, 60, 114, 149,
29
According to Bhabha, the First World has had the right to signify, produce knowledge and hold the ideal of progress. The criticism he makes is that enunciations can also be identified in the periphery.56 In this regard, Bhabha proposes identifying spheres of social experience based on cultures “as a strategy of survival and supplementarity”.57 These experiences imply the necessity to study the transnational displacements and translational cultures.
Bhabha proposes to study postcolonial theories not based on a dichotomy position of oppressor/submitted but rather mimicry (ironic and inappropriate imitation), hybridity (mix identities), sly civility (artful and foxy politeness) or liminal identification (on the borders).58 This means stepping aside the space of contention. Thus, for him, it is important to recognize the negotiation that the subaltern performs to enunciate his/her identity, namely the movements that an agent realizes to subvert his/her position as the Other.59
According to Bhabha, the postcolonial agent (the active subject that says discourses) moves in an 'in-between identity,' which creates a Third Space.60 This means that her/his identity is not only based on what that person learns at school, for instance, but also what that agent puts into practice. Bhabha calls this an ambivalent position, which relocated a unique cultural center by putting enunciations into practice.61
In order to create enunciations, Bhabha considers it necessary that the agent positions himself/herself in a “space of intervention”.62 This space may have three main characteristics. First, a non-dualistic position to study the Other, not as a reflection from a mirror, but rather as hybrid identities crossing the mirrors. Bhabha uses a metaphor of the 'glass darkly,' because what the agent finds is a 'buried or smoking mirror', as Fuentes mentions before in his reflections about Spain and America.63 Subsequently, the idea of the mirror does not disappear, but rather acquires profundity. It does not contain a single truth
56 Ibid, 2. 57 Ibid, 172 and 175. 58 Ibid, 86. 59 Ibid, 184-185. 60 Ibid, 18 and 31.
61 See Ibid, 145, 154 and 177. 62 Ibid, 9, 26 and 110. 63
30
but the truths and the madness in the same level, the perspective from different viewers/readers/performers and the desacralization of the other(s) and Self (s).64
The second possible condition to create enunciations is related to the 'unhomeliness' of the agents.65 This means they can be located beyond a specific home, territory or fixed identity. Thirdly, the culture is not given but negotiated. This negotiation is not necessarily a dialogue; alternatively, it can be a conflictive challenge. 66 Metaphors to visualize this third element can include a stairwell (connects two liminal spaces and represents upward and downward movement) and a bridge (connects two places and it implies crossing). 67 The figure below illustrates the theoretical approach proposed by Bhabha.
64 Bhabha, The location of culture, 48. 65 Ibid, 9. 66 Ibid, 177. 67 Ibid, 3-5. Spheres of social experience based on strategy of survival and supplementarity
Figure 7. The intervention of the Third Space of enunciation. See Bhabha, The location of culture, 2-5,
9, 12, 18, 26, 31, 37, 48, 52, 86, 110, 145, 154, 172, 175, 177, 184-185, and 252. Images sources: “espejo,” in sallejovenjerez.blogspot.com, “puente,” in Actividades Lúdicas Educativas, actiactiludis.com and “escaleras,” in Coloreal Junior, colorearjunior.com, accessed 5 April 2014.
Hybrid sites of cultural negotiation (dialogue/conflict ) Hybrid sites of cultural negotiation (dialogue/conflict) Profundity of representation: glass darkly mirror
Transnational and transcultural spaces
Spaces of intervention: enunciation.
Metaphors: stairwell or bridge
31
Therefore, the acknowledgment of transnational and transcultural is a first step, followed by recognizing the right to signify from the periphery, making visible contra-modernity and identifying active agents of articulation of the discourse.68 These three steps have an incident in the literature with the transnational histories of the discrepant travelers, as studied before. In the particular case of the literary fiction, this can be observed when a writer depicts marginal characters and settings in his narrations. This is studied in depth in the next chapter with Bolaño.
The next subchapter will return to the relation between trips and space. It is important to remember that beyond the elements mentioned by Claude Lévi-Strauss in
Tristes Tropiques (1955), Ette adds the cultural poles, already studied with the
transculturality and the Third Space. The other important element is the frictionality in the texts, which the following subchapter will discuss in further detail.
1.5 Voices of the open text: frictionality
In Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1963) and Rabelais and his world (1965), Bakhtin identifies that Dostoevsky and Rabelais wrote polyphonical novels. According to Bakhtin, these writers used interactive voices that make a unique truth or conclusion unstable. Likewise, in their novels, the dialogue is used to subvert moral prohibitions; for instance, the grotesque representation of the carnival is depicted in Rabelais.69
Julia Kristeva has since studied these texts from Bakhtin, underlining the manner in which dialogism appeared in the language. On the one hand, there are monological creations closer to theological propositions and prohibitions, in which the subversive voices tend to be more silenced. One example of this is the epic narratives or the novels written by Tolstoy. On the other hand, there are polyphonic creations closer to the representation of carnival, with voices that tend to transgress the moral messages or values. The examples given these polyphonic creations are the modern novels created by Dostoevsky, Kafka or Joyce. It is important to note that Kristeva’s study also offers a critical position to study discourses as close linguistic entities, particularly with her concept of intertextuality.
68 See Ibid, 2, 31 252.
69
32
Intertextuality shows that the texts are always interconnected with other text and thus they cannot be read as a close structure.70
Moreover, Ette introduces the concept of “friction”71 to describe the movement within the text and criticize discourses as close entities. Before him, Genette identified two types of literatures: first, fiction, which alludes to imaginary objects, with Genette’s providing novels, story tails, epic or dramatic narratives as examples; and second, diction, which is associated with formal characteristics without mixed forms, exemplified by memories or autobiographies.72
Ette criticizes the dichotomy of these concepts by subscribing a third one: the friction, which moves between the fictional and dictional. Ette’s idea is to break the literary genre division in the sense that if the text is the product of a journey, the discourses can take a symbolic and textual trip from one literary genre to another one.
Ette provides different examples concerning frictional literature, including the false biography written by Max Aub, Jusep Torres Campalans. The latter is a novel with references to real artists (Picasso, Unamuno, Baroja, Azorín) and exact historical data about the painter’s political life. Aub even included catalogs of Jusep’s paintings, testimonies and photographs. For these reasons, some readers considered Jusep as a real painter, despite being a literary joke.73
Martin Estudillo and Bague perceive this frictionality in the 'hybrid literature.' They use this concept and apply it to impure fiction texts that mix different literary genres. According to them, this hybridism can be observed in Claudio Magris with Danube (1986)
and Microcosm (1997), as well as in W. G. Sebald with Austerlitz (2001) and The Rings of Saturn (1995). For them, this hybrid literature implies the combination of the story with
70
See Julia Kristeva The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 38-45.
71
Ette, Literatura en movimiento…, 41.
72 See Gérard Gennette, Figures V (Paris: Seuil, 2002), 249.
73 See Max Aub, Jusep Torres Campalans (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1958). For an interesting publication about the context that surrounded this publication see Estelle Irizarry, La broma
literaria en nuestros días: Max Aub, Francisco de Ayala, Ricardo Gullón, Carlos Ripoll, César Tiempo
33
historiography and the biography of the writer represented by an alter ego.74 From his perspective, the combinations of these elements produce tension between the fiction and non-fiction.
A further example is the studied myth of Europe. In the historic version, Europe was carried off from Tyre (Phoenice), probably by the Cretans, whereas in the mythological, Europe was carried off by Zeus.75 This shows the correlation between the dictional world of history and the fictional world of Greek mythology.
To summarize, due to frictionality, the text is transcended, transformed and in a way affected by the diverse cultural translations. Translation has been used to overcome a close conception of a nationality or culture, and in this case, a close conception of a linguistic text. Thus, the text is also interconnected with other texts and cultures. The next subchapter will discuss the connection between the text and the space regarding the cities as open entities.
1.6 From a European city flâneur to a transcultural flâneur traveling through European cities
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) studied the poetry of Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) framed within the Parisian Modernity of the XX century. Baudalaire is important because he can be considered “the first modern European poet.”76 According to Benjamin, the French poet was a provocateur, a protected fencer who wanted to keep observing the reality. Bhabha briefly mentions the role of the agent provocateur as someone who moves between the theory and practice. The agent provocateur is a performer but not a static political committed intellectual.77 In this sense, the provocateur does not have a restricted moral position and can create polyphonical literary products.
Furthermore, Benjamin mentions that one of Baudelaire’s roles is the flâneur. The latter is a poet who, in order to create, walks and observes the marginal and urban Parisian
74 See Luis Martin-Estudillo and Luis Bague Quilez, “Hacia la literatura hibrida: Roberto Bolaño y la narrativa española contemporánea,” Bolaño salvaje, ed. Edmundo Paz Soldán and Gustavo Faverón Patriau (Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2008), 447, 448-449.
75
See Apollodorus, The library I, 133-135, 299, 303-305. Cfr. Herodotus, Books I-II, , vii, viii, ix, 3- 5, 217. 76
Lehan, The city in literature…, 74-75. 77
34
Modernity;78 his opposite is the badaud, who only gazes at the mass with a “morbid nature.”79
For the flâneur, the space can be divided into two segments. First, as a result of his
spleen in solitude, the flâneur goes to the city. Once there, he observes the mass with
patience and becomes an unknown man among the arcades, department stores, buildings, newsstands and cafe terraces.80 A representation of this is a man with a turtle, which became a fashion in the Paris of those days.81
In a second level, the poet creates his own phantasmogoria of space, where the modern heroes are not epic but liminal characters, e.g. criminals or prostitutes. These anti-heroes represent the horror of the observed city.82 Then, the flâneur is watchful as well as a creator.83
78 See Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life.., 72. 79 Ibid, 98-99.
80 See Ibid, 69 and 84. 81 See Ibid, 84. 82
See Ibid, 40 and 107. 83
35
After Baudelaire, the phantasmogoria of city space has also been expressed by other writers such as Flaubert with Salammbo (1862) or Joyce with Ulysses (1922). This can be traced back to the myth of Dionysus and it is attached to the liminal topics and characters who are mad, alone, exiled or outsiders of the society. Therefore, these topics offer a different face of a progressive and hermeneutical Modernity. In addition, according to Lehan, the sense of an epic and ideal city is changed by the “unhomely.” 84
Another important aspect to note is that the flâneur “stands on the threshold of the metropolis as of the middle class.”85 Therefore, this figure can be associated to the border and in-between identities previously studied with Bhabha. However, the flâneur identities
84 See Lehan, The city in literature…, xv. 85
Benjamin, The writer of Modern Life…, 40.
Figure 9. Baudelaire’s flâneur in the Paris of XX century. See Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life…, 40,
45, 60, 72 84, 91, 98, 99, 107, 125. Images sources: “esgrima,” Imagenes Depósito, http://www.imagenesdeposito.com/deportes/23583/dibujo+del+esgrima.html; “urban flâneur,” Blog Urban Flaneur Guidebook urbanflaneruguidebook.blogspot.com, akantilado.wordpress.com, accessed 17 May 2014.
Spleen (librarie s, desks, house) Observes: mass in arcades and streets:
liminal characters
Creates: phantasmogoria of space: Modern anti-heroes and characters: criminals, kept woman, ragpickers,
prostitutes, lesbians
Paris as a city. XIX century: Novelty
