Miguel Angel Asturias’s Archeology of Return

320 Pages·1993·8.29 MB·English

by  Reni Prieto

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICAN
AND IBERIAN LITERATURE 7
Miguel Angel Asturias's archaeology of return
Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) is one of the notable literary figures in
Latin America who in the 1920s contrived both to explore and define Latin
American literature within the mainstream of Western history. He managed
to be poetic, political, and mythological at the same time, with a degree of
synthesis rarely achieved then or since. As is the case with many Latin Amer-
ican writers, his work is inextricably linked with politics, and he lived in exile
for many years. He was influenced by Indian mythology, fantasy, and surre-
alism and was the first Latin American novelist to understand the implica-
tions of anthropology and structural linguistics for culture and fiction. In
1967, Asturias became the first Latin American novelist to win the Nobel
Prize in literature.
Rene Prieto examines how Miguel Angel Asturias turned to the cultural
traditions of the ancient Maya and combined them with the rhetoric of sur-
realism in order to produce three highly complex and widely misunderstood
masterpieces: the Leyendas de Guatemala (1930), Hombres de maiz (1949), and
Mulata de tal (1963). Asturias was the first American author to succeed in
portraying an indigenous world vision that is truly non-Western. Borrowing
a variety of techniques from pre-Columbian manuscripts, he created a new
type of literature that is still the best example of the cultural blend typifying
the Americas. This is the first book to examine these three novels in terms
of their composition beyond the usual political readings normally attributed
to them.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICAN
AND IBERIAN LITERATURE
General Editor
ENRIQUE PUPO-WALKER
Centennial Professor of Spanish
Director, Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies
Vanderbilt University
Editorial Board
JOSE LUIS ABELLAN
(Professor of Intellectual History, Universidad
Complutense, Madrid)
JOAQUIM-FRANCISCO COELHO
(Nancy Clark Smith Professor of Portuguese and
Comparative Literature, Harvard)
ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARR1A
(Bass Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, Yale)
JAVIER HERRERO
(William R. Kenan Professor of Spanish, Virginia)
BARRY W.IFE
(Cervantes Professor of Spanish, King's College, London)
SYLVIA MOLLOY
(Albert Schweitzer Professor of Spanish and Comparative
Literature, New York University)
PETER E. RUSSELL
(Emeritus Professor of Spanish Studies, Oxford)
In the same series:
Gustavo Perez Firmat: The Cuban condition: translation and identity in
modern Cuban literature
Carlos J. Alonso: The Spanish American regional novel: modernity and
autochthony
Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria: Myth and archive: a theory of Latin American
narrative
Sylvia Molloy: At face value: autobiographical writing in Spanish America
Derek Flitter: Spanish romantic literary theory and criticism
Antonio Cussen: Bello and Bolivar: poetry and politics in the Spanish
American Revolution
Miguel Angel Asturias's
archaeology of
return
RENE PRIETO
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www. Cambridge. org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521112451
© Cambridge University Press 1983
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1983
This digitally printed version 2009
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Prieto, Rene.
Miguel Angel Asturias's archaeology of return / Rene Prieto.
p. cm. — (Cambridge studies in Latin American and Iberian
literature ; 7)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-43412-2 (he)
1. Asturias, Miguel Angel - Criticism and interpretation. 2. Magic
realism (Literature) 3. Mayas in literature. I. Title.
II. Series.
PQ7499.A75Z83 1993
863 - dc20 92-24500
CIP
ISBN 978-0-521-43412-6 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-11245-1 paperback
To kawa and leps

Contents
Acknowledgments page ix
Introduction 1
1 The tales that now no one believes: Leyendas de
Guatemala 16
The first steps 17
Mythmaker 22
Proteus in the streets of Paris 27
Making 'Tabula rasa" of surrealism 33
The birth of neo-Indigenismo 37
Tropical anamorphosis 42
Resolution as solution 64
The sifting of ancient times 66
2 Becoming ants after the harvest: Hombres de maiz 85
Sinbad sails home 85
A unifying principle 90
Burning water 98
Opossum's dawn 104
Uneven Eve 108
Coyote's covenant 123
Tall tales made to order 127
A new American idiom 138
The role of animals 141
Numbers 150
Colors 154
3 If all the dead began to walk, the earth would be
full of steps: Mulata de tal 161
The short-lived republic of "bread, land,
and freedom" 162
After the fall 166
The devil bearing gifts 169
The transgressive power of eroticism 183
Money doesn't smell 196
The world upside down 213
In praise of folly 227
vii
Vlll CONTENTS
Conclusion: From death unto life 238
Notes 255
Bibliography 285
Index 295
Acknowledgments
As is the case with most books, this one developed in directions
that were unforeseeable in the beginning. Like a tree in a gar-
den, it came to have a life of its own, sprouting branches in un-
likely places. I watered, trimmed, and tended it, but was not
alone in making it grow.
During many unforgettable months at the ficole des Hautes
£tudes, Roland Barthes shed light on the kind of methodology
that would ultimately allow me to unravel the arcane mysteries
of the Leyendas de Guatemala, Hombres de maiz, and Mulata de tal.
It was he who convinced me of Greimas's relevance to my own
research, who suggested I attend Lacan's seminar, who intro-
duced me to Severo Sarduy. Sarduy, in turn, lent a critical ear
to my enthusiastic ravings about Asturias, never failing to inject
a note of humor into what might otherwise have been stuffy
overebullience.
During the year I spent at the £cole Normale Superieure in
Paris, I was also very fortunate to have the expert advice of
Jean-Louis Houdebine from the Sorbonne. I wish to thank him
as well as a handful of very dear friends - Kay Beers, Bob and
Polly Maguire, Rick and Martha Lapham, David and Jean Little-
field, Catherine Borovski, Claude Chatelard, and Janet Beers-
Winkler - without whose loyalty, intelligence, and support this
project might not have got off the ground.
I was able to continue beyond the first stage of planning and
research in Paris thanks to the generosity of the National En-
dowment for the Humanities. The Endowment has funded
my work on Asturias on two occasions: first, with a year-long
fellowship that provided the time, the tools, and the occasion
to study Mayan anthropology; then, three years later, with
a Travel to Collections grant that allowed me to return to Paris
IX