If he were alive, “the greatest Mexican writer born in Chile”, Roberto Bolaño, would have turned 70 and given us countless new works, more than 2666, which was unpublished when he died in 2003. I admit that I came late to this great author; and, overwhelmed by the excess of the novel whose title I use in this column, I try to understand the reasons for its importance. The fact that it entered the universal literature after its translation into English is a sign that the world has a lingua franca that we cannot dispute, and today, 35 years after its publication, it is already in 40 languages.
What drives its 700+ pages forward? The answer is simple: literature. The experience of literature as a way of life and an unstoppable passion that is felt from an early age and that drives the wounded letter to searches and discoveries essential for existence and writing. The creative urge resembles human eros, a libidinous force that often embraces and unstoppably breaks pages. The protagonists, who are in Mexico while he was still DF, are part of a literary group, true visceralistswho depart from the trends of their time – the mid-70s –: poetic leftism or the followers of Octavio Paz, in order to propose the emergence of poetry that breaks with reality at the moment.
Being a poet in that time and in that environment requires, first of all, loyalty to the avant-garde of the stridentists of the twenties of the 20th century; and then distancing from the bourgeois canons of life that assume formality, conventions, schedules. Young poets take refuge in cafeterias and bars, in showrooms and classrooms, and infiltrate homes as chaotic as they are to rob dining rooms and beds. In the meantime, they write and write, look for means of publication, read French poets and focus all their poetic significance on the woman whose only name they have.
Sometimes witness stories are so long and concise that they make true stories…
The strangeness of the polyphony that Bolaño composes is found in the central part of the novel, where he gives voice to 54 characters with the intention of stealing something from the protagonists, the leaders of the movement, always watched and listened to by intermediaries who travel the world – Paris, Barcelona, , Austria and other places – as transitory and unattainable beings, never created or delineated by stable attributes. Those connoisseurs of the novel recognized the author’s qualities that are revealed in those eerie steps, the mastery of Mexican slang by those who arrived in Mexico at the age of 15, the endless literary references in the mouths of those who live inside the bubble of poetry. – your name is Rimbaud, Paul Valery, Rosario Castellanos–.
Sometimes the witnesses’ stories are so long and compact that they form true stories and connect with the author’s other texts (Bolaño transferred his characters from work to work). But do not think that the golden goal of poetry has been achieved. This novel is largely a story about the failure of youthful illusions, the anthropophagy of talents for a shared life. Poetry is a mystery, a spell that does not always leave a trace, because its search can be fruitless. We have not yet understood those who sacrificed everything for it, true poets. (OR)
Source: Eluniverso
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
