Reinscribing Poetry's Potential: Jose Emilio Pacheco Reads Ramon Lopez Velarde. Reinscribing Poetry's Potential: Jose Emilio Pacheco Reads Ramon Lopez Velarde.

Reinscribing Poetry's Potential: Jose Emilio Pacheco Reads Ramon Lopez Velarde‪.‬

Hispanofila 2008, Sept, 154

    • 25,00 kr
    • 25,00 kr

Publisher Description

IN Mexico, as in other parts of Latin America, it is not uncommon for officials of the government and its various branches to raise authors and their texts to an iconic status hailing them as representative of national values. Such is the case with Mexican poet Ramon Lopez Velarde who was labeled "national poet" by president Echeverria in 1971. With Lopez Velarde, as with other artists, the official conception which allows for his assimilation into the cultural imaginary often elides elements disruptive to the unities the nation wishes to create. As the nation narrates its past through the incorporation of texts, authors and heroes, it seeks to assert an uninterrupted, unproblematic connection between the present and the past. It takes figures like Lopez Velarde and turns them into public, national icons in an effort to create a common set of images that support national ideals. The relationship between nation and the arts however is never an easy one. For example, in the particular case of literature the metaphoric potential of language must be reduced or eliminated in order for it to be used in national discourse. For similar reasons, the official reading of Ramon Lopez Velarde as a national icon is at variance with the often times frustrating ambiguities one finds in trying to arrive at an understanding of his life or his work. In spite of this difference, the multiplicity represented by his private, literary persona is infrequently forced to confront the official image. By not placing him in relation to his official persona, literary interpretations of his work have indirectly gone along with the nationalist, official efforts to exclude the potential created by his metaphoric language from the cultural imaginary. Jose Emilio Pacheco however places the officially accepted understanding of Lopez Velarde into relation with the more problematic interpretation of his work and life. By doing this Pacheco reasserts the place of poetry's potential in the political sphere. This unsettles the official cultural imaginary. Many studies have shown how the construction of the cultural imaginary, a set of approved images that a community holds in common, often leads to exclusions and silences. These studies then seek to unearth the repressed texts and voices or read the accepted texts against the grain to show the fissures that exist within the smooth narrative the nation wishes to construct. Recent critical works on the transformative potential of poetic language share a common interest with such studies with one important difference. Rather than offering a reading of poetic works that completes the national narrative by bringing to light elements previously silenced, they try to understand the multiple, and therefore indeterminate nature of metaphoric or poetic language in relation to the political context or cultural imaginary. In this case what has been silenced by national discourse and in many ways left unstudied by critical works is the relationship between the potential of poetic language and the cultural imaginary. Critical works on Latin American poetry that study the relationship between poetry and politics have underlined the power of poetic language to subvert codified discursive practices. However perhaps due to the very nature of poetic language itself, subversion here is never a completed project, it is rather a subversion that is always in process.

GENRE
Professional & Technical
RELEASED
2008
1 September
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
27
Pages
PUBLISHER
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Romance Languages
SIZE
208.2
KB

More Books by Hispanofila

Demented Disclosures and the Art of Seeing in a Confissao de Lucio. Demented Disclosures and the Art of Seeing in a Confissao de Lucio.
2006
Mario Benedetti's El Olvido Esta Lleno de Memoria: Consolidating the Forces of Memory and Oblivion. Mario Benedetti's El Olvido Esta Lleno de Memoria: Consolidating the Forces of Memory and Oblivion.
2006
Not So "Happily Ever After": Equivocal Ideology in Plays by Calderon, Hurtado de Mendoza, And Rojas Zorrilla. Not So "Happily Ever After": Equivocal Ideology in Plays by Calderon, Hurtado de Mendoza, And Rojas Zorrilla.
2005
La Filosofia de Jorge Luis Borges y Su Celebracion Por Los Postmodernistas. La Filosofia de Jorge Luis Borges y Su Celebracion Por Los Postmodernistas.
2005
Calderon's Duelos de Amor y Lealtad: A Metaphor for Seventeenth Century Spanish Politics. Calderon's Duelos de Amor y Lealtad: A Metaphor for Seventeenth Century Spanish Politics.
2005
Critiquing the Elite in the Barataria and "Ricote" Food Episodes in Don Quixote II. Critiquing the Elite in the Barataria and "Ricote" Food Episodes in Don Quixote II.
2006