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Angel Flores:
Lucila-Inés Mena
Further broadens understanding of term Magic Realism
Links it to conditions peculiar to Latin America – conditions impossible to reduce to any European model
1. Narrative is not limited strictly to a mirroring of objective reality
BROAD – allows for fuzzy perceptions of fantasy: uncanny, marvelous, wondrous, supernatural, surreal, anything not 100% reality based
2. Author happens to be Latin American
RESTRICTIVE – automatically excludes anyone not Latin American
Rationality vs. Irrationality
“I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it…I always want to see the third dimension of something…I want to come alive with the object.”
Arturo Uslar Piertri
-1948
“Lo que vino a predominar en el cuento [venezolano] y a marcar su huella de una manera perdurable fue la consideración del hombre como misterio en medio de datos realistas. Una adivinación poética o una negación poética de la realidad. Lo que a falta de otra palabra podrá llamarse un realismo mágico. (“El cuento…” p. 287)
“What has come to predominate in the [Venezuelan] short story and to leave a lasting mark was the consideration of man as a mystery in the midst of realistic data. A poetic negation of reality. What, lacking any other word, could be called a magical realism.”
-Cuba
Alejo Carpentier
"lo real maravilloso" (marvelous [or'wonderous] reality")
Impact of Borges’
Magic Realism
on Cinema Today
- Angel Flores
sees magical realism as a Latin American invention
20th Century
Borges and Magic Realism
Conclusion
"Reality isn't just "out there", like some block of cement: reality is an interpretation. In a sense we co-create our reality. And we do that all the time, every day. One day we wake up and we’re in a great mood: the city we live in is a beautiful city, the next day it’s an ugly city. That’s just the way we interpret things. We’re not free necessarily to choose the facts of our life, but there is an element of freedom in how we interpret them.”
“Although Magic Realism is evident in Borges’ first stories of Historia universal de la infamia written in the 1930s, it was not until the 1950s that his fame attained international proportions, coinciding with the Latin American rejection of Criollismo and Social Realism and the reemergence of Magic Realism.”
“Magical Realism--We recognize the world, although now--not only because we have emerged from a dream--we look on it with new eyes. We are offered a new style that is thoroughly of this world that celebrates the mundane. This new world of objects is still alien to the current idea of Realism. It employs various techniques that endow all things with a deeper meaning and reveal mysteries that always threaten the secure tranquility of simple and ingenuous things. This [art offers a] calm admiration of the magic of being, of the discovery that things already have their own faces, [this] means that the ground in which the most diverse ideas in the world can take root has been re-conquered--albeit in new ways. For the new art it is a question of representing before our eyes, in an intuitive way, the fact, the interior figure, of the exterior world” (Franz Roh, Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism (1925).Magical Realism. Ed. L. P. Zamora and W. B. Faris. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. p. 15-32.).
Translated to Spanish by José Ortega y Gasset’s influential Revista de Occidente in Madrid
Borges and Translation
Borges and Magic Realism
Borges is known to use a figure of speech called oxymoron.
Examples of oxymoron in Borges’ work are evident in the titles of his stories:
El espantoso redentor Lazarus Morell
[The Frightening Redeemer Lazarus Morell]
El impostor inversímil Tom Castro
[The Improbable Imposter Tom Castro]
El asesino disinteresado Bill Harrigan
[The Selfless Murderer Bill Harrigan]
“ Existe controversia y confusión al respecto [definir el realismo mágico] y aún no se cuenta con una acepción que tenga aceptación general”
(“Controversy and confusion exists in this matter [defining magic realism] and there is still no definition that has been universally accepted.”) (Batutista Gutiérrez, p. 13)
A First Encyclopaedia of Tlön. vol. XI. Hlaer to Jangr. No había indicación de fecha ni de lugar. En la primera página y en una hoja de papel de seda que cubría una de las láminas en colores había estampado un óvalo azul con esta inscripción:Orbis Tertius. Hacía dos años que yo había descubierto en un tomo de cierta enciclopedia práctica una somera descripción de un falso país; ahora me deparaba el azar algo más precioso y más arduo. Ahora tenía en las manos un vasto fragmento metódico de la historia total de un planeta desconocido, con sus arquitecturas y sus barajas, con el pavor de sus mitologías y el rumor de sus lenguas, con sus emperadores y sus mares, con sus minerales y sus pájaros y sus peces, con su álgebra y su fuego, con su controversia teológica y metafísica. Todo ello articulado, coherente, sin visible propósito doctrinal o tono paródico.
The book was written in English and contained 1001 pages.
On the yellow leather back I read these curious words which were
repeated on the title page: A First Encyclopedia of Tlön. Vol. XI. Hlaer
to Jangr. There was no indication of date or place. On the first page and
on a leaf of silk paper that covered on of the color plates there was
stamped a blue oval with this inscription: Orbis Tertius. Two years
before I had discovered, in a volume of a certain pirated encyclopedia, a
superficial description of a nonexistent country; now chance afforded me
something more precious and arduous. Now I held in my hands a vast
methodical fragment of an unknown planet's entire history, with its
architecture and its playing cards, with the dread of its mythologies and the murmur of its languages, with its emperors and its seas, with its minerals and its birds and its fish, with its algebra and its fire, with its theological and metaphysical controversy. And all of it articulated, coherent, with no visible doctrinal intent or tone of parody.
Realism
• Imitation/reflection of real life
• Bound by physical rules of nature →familiar
Magic:
• Shatters/transcends those rules
Magic Realism:
Fantastic
Uncanny
“Marvelous Reality”
Surrealism
Supernatural
More Examples of Magic Realsim
Film and Opera
"the tone that I eventually used in One Hundred Years of Solitude was based on the way my grandmother used to tell stories. She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness... What was most important was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories and everyone was surprised. In previous attempts to write, I tried to tell the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face." -Gabriel Márquez
Borges and Magic Realism
• Magic realism--the capacity to enrich our idea of what is 'real' by incorporating all dimensions of the imagination, particularly as expressed in magic, myth and religion. (Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia)
• Magic realism--the result of a unique fusion of the beliefs and superstitions of different cultural groups that included the Hispanic conqueror, his criollo (creole) descendants, the native peoples and the African slaves. Magic realism, like myth, also provides an essentially synthetic or totalizing way of depicting reality. It was firmly grounded in daily reality and expressed man's astonishment before the wonders of the real world, [and] convey[s] a vision of the fantastic features of reality. (Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century)
Another distinguishing characteristic of Borges’ work is the lack of emotion in both the characters and the reader.
• Magic realism--a kind of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastical events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains the 'reliable' tone of objective realistic report. Designating a tendency of the modern novel to reach beyond the confines of realism and draw upon the energies of fable, folk tale, and myth while maintaining a strong contemporary social relevance. The fantastic attributes given to characters in such novels--levitation, flight, telepathy, telekinesis--are among the means that magic realism adopts in order to encompass the often phantasmagoric political realities of the 20th century. (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
• Magic realism--[is characterized by] the mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic, bizarre and skillful time shifts, convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots, miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and fairy stories, expressionistic and even surrealistic description, arcane erudition, the elements of surprise or abrupt shock, the horrific and the inexplicable. (A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory)
Apuleyo Mendoza, Plinio; García Márquez:Garbriel (1983), The Fragrance of Carolina: University of North Carolina Press
Bautista Gutiérrez, Gloria. (1991) Realismo Mágico, cosmos latinoamericano: Teoría y práctica. Bogotá: América Latina
Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth | my daily art display. (2001). my daily art display. Retrieved from http://mydailyartdisplay.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/christinas-world-by-andrew-wyeth/
criollismo. (2014). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143205/criollismo
Contreras, J. (2010). INCEPTION and Jorge Luis Borges. Americas, 62(6), 41
Flores, Ángel.(1955) “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction,” Hispania, 38
García Márquez, Garbriel (2003), Living to tell the tale, New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Itzcoff, D. (2010). A man and his dream: Christopher nolan and ‘inception’. Arts Beat: The New York Times, Retrieved from
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Jorge luis borges - biography. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.egs.edu/library/jorge-luis-borges/biography/
Tóibín, C. (2006). Don’t abandon me. [Review of the book Borges: A Life.] London Review of Books, 28(9), 19-26. Retrieved from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/colm-toibin/dont-abandon-me.
Velinger, J. (2003). Current Affairs Interpretations of reality: Yann Martel's Life of Pi. Radio Prague. Retrieved from http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/interpretations-of-reality-yann-martels-life-of-pi
Waisman, S. (2005). Borges and translation : the irreverence of the periphery / Sergio Waisman. Lewisburg, Pa. : Bucknell University Press, c2005.
What is Magic Realism. (2011). What is Magic Realism. Retrieved from http://www.tendreams.org/magic-art.htm
Wimhurst, K. (2008). Serendipity - Magic(al) Realism by Katy Wimhurst.Serendipity - Magic(al) Realism by Katy Wimhurst. Retrieved from http://www.magicalrealism.co.uk/view.php?story=101
Wikipedia (n.d.). Magic Realism. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism
Wikipedia (2014). Franz Roh. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Roh
Zamora, L., & Faris, W. B. (1995). Magical realism : theory, history, community. Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 1995.
LeBrun, L., & McCauley, G. (2001). Reality: Fact or Interpretation?. Reality: Fact or Interpretation?. Retrieved from http://www.wel-systems.com/articles/Reality.htm#.UzWhI6
Matrix - Wake-Up After Death.wmv [Video file]. Retrieved from
Seymour Menton. (1982). Jorge Luis Borges, Magic Realist. Hispanic Review, Vol. 50, No. 4, pp. 411-426
Martin, Gerald (2008), Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, London Penguin
Marrya, Vibha (January 1983), "Gabriel García Márquez", Social Scientist (Social Scientist) 11 (1): 53-58
Mena, Lucila-Inés. (1975). “Hacia una formulación teórica del realismo mágico,” Bulletin hispanique, 77, 3-4, 395-407
Moore, L. (1998). Magical realism. Retrieved from http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/magical-realism/
Roh, Franz. (1974). “El cuento venezolano” in Letras y Hombres de Venezuela, 3rd Ed. Madrid: Editorial Mediterráneo
Saldívar, Dasso (1997), García Márquez: El viaje a la semilla: la biografía, Madrid: Alfaguara
Sims, Robert (1994), Review: Dominant, Residual, andEmergent: Revent Criticism on Colombian Literature and Gabriel García Márquez", Latin American Research Review (Larin American Studies Association) 29 (2): 223-23
social realism. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved March 27, 2014, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/social realism
Tóibín, C. (2006). Don’t abandon me. [Review of the book Borges: A Life.] London Review of Books, 28(9), 19-26. Retrieved from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/colm-toibin/dont-abandon-me.