Literature

Culture, History

By Lorena Fernández

Though for many the notion of Colombian literature immediately brings to mind Gabriel García Márquez and the style of magical realism, the literary movements and authors this country has seen are as diverse as the culture itself. The common denominator of Latin American literature can be clearly defined in

Colombian authors from the colonial era, passing through the independence authors, and the styles like costumbrismo, los nuevos, el nadaísmo and the boom generation.

Colonial literature in Colombia was heavily influenced by religion, since only religious men were educated in the art of writing and it would have been difficult to publish stories of heroes who weren’t saints because the church controlled printers. By the time the people of Colombia began fighting for independence, the political discourse became the spark that ignited the fire of patriotic poetry and a general search for a national identity in narration. Antonio Nariño, a republican journalist known as the father of political journalism in Colombia, was a key figure in the literature that lead up to the independence. After July 20, 1810, Nariño funded the political newspaper La Bagadela, an outlet for his centralist discourse which served him to later get elected president of Cundinamarca.

The second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century saw the style known as costumbrismo emerged and become the first defined mark of what we know today as Colombian literature. Costumbrismo concentrated on narrating real characters in society as a way of defining the culture and its people. The critical style acquired during the independence era continued in costumbrismo, in fact, it has continued to question quotidian rules and government throughout published pages of every literary era.

The poet Gregorio Gutiérrez Gonzáles (known as the man of the three Gs) is a particularly good example of costumbrismo, as his descriptions of romantic style gave details of everyday family life and exposed the melancholy and love of common places. León de Greiff, Luis Vidales and Tomás Carrasquilla were some of the best writers in the 1920s who belong to the literary movement referred to as los nuevos (the new.) The style shared by this group consisted in a hidden romanticism and a negation of the past. The ugly was emphasized and the narrations were often dark and mysterious. De Greiff was the bohemian best known in the Nuevo movement. His work was heavily criticized because of his constant experimentation with form, style and vocabulary. He was awarded the National Prize for Poetry in 1970.

The movement funded by Gonzálo Arango, a bohemian journalist, came to be the trend of the 50s. Nadaísmo adhered itself to existentialist and nihilist principles. Before Arango, Fernando Gonzáles Ochoa produced the first writings that would later be catalogued as Nadaístas, as Arango was a disciple of Ochoa. Considered one of the greatest Colombian thinkers of all times, Ochoa spent his life developing original philosophies and artistic works. Though he was nominated to a Nobel Prize of Literature in 1995, he did not win the recognition. In 2006, however, Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez aproved a law in which the nation would remember the life and works of Ochoa and declared his house, la Casa Museo Otraparte, a cultural landmark.

With the boom generation came the acclaimed Gabriel García Márquez, who not only moved Colombian and Latin American literature into the style of magical realism, but achieved world admiration and the 1982 Nobel Prize of Literature with his family novel “Cien Años de Soledad.” Needless to say this movement advanced Colombian literature to the top of the list, however, it was followed by a generation of pessimistic authors for some years before the contemporary authors took back the characteristic quotidian descriptions and magical realism of today’s publications.