José Donoso’s fiction was often interpreted as an amazing example of literary technique, but also as an expression of its author’s capacity of creating incredible characters involved in numerous ...actions that permanently challenges the reader. In his well-known novel
(1970), his most famous writing, the Chilean author evaluates the relationship between imagination and reality in a human universe dominated by violence and death. In this context, Humberto Peñaloza’s attempt to compile the history of Azcoitía family represents not only the desperate attempt of an intellectual to emphasize the importance of the written word, but also a clear hint to the Latin American realities of the previous centuries.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s masterpiece
(1965) ignores all details of traditional chronology and should be interpreted as an exquisite artistic form of Latin American “neo-baroque” which ...characterizes its Cuban author’s style. Havana, the capital and the center of interest within this book, thus becomes an intricate labyrinth which expresses the complexity of human life in a given political and social context, but also illustrates the textual choice of a unique writer determined to ignore all previous patterns of literary representation and expression. The metaphor of “the lost city” goes through the text and influences all the characters’ choices and attitudes (including sometimes their self-imposed exile), expressing the quintessence of a way of life that would completely disappear after the Cuban Revolution.
Throughout literature, journey means adventure and quest, whether material or spiritual: it determines, for those who undertake it, enrichment of soul and mind and, subsequently, an initiatory ...experience. ...starting from the initial state of self-denial, the journey reaches its goal only when the protagonists accepts themselves completely, with the good and the bad, with the past that they cannot change and with everything that the future holds for them because the only true and the most authentic journey is the one human beings makes within themselves. ...it is our contributors' attempt to travel within and among books, a Borgesian passage through labyrinths full of endlessly forking paths.
Vintilă Horia is one of the most interesting writers of the Romanian exile of the second half of the 20
century. His novel entitled
, published in 1960, explores the meanings of human uprooting under ...tragic circumstances and discusses exile (of the character and also of the author) as a tragic characteristic of mankind. Forced to live away from his native Romania because of the authoritarian regime imposed after 1945 in all Eastern European countries, Horia finds a symbolic version of his own life in Latin poet Ovid’s exile imposed by Augustus; therefore the protagonist of the novel gradually turns into the author’s
, being a lucid writer, completely assuming this painful uprooting and finding his true artistic identity precisely within exile, by the exquisite literary works he creates during the last years of his life.
Published in 1960, in France, the novel God Was Born in Exile (Dieu est né en exil) confirmed the talent of its author, Romanian born Vintilă Horia, and also the originality of a writer who had to ...leave his native country after the World War and use a foreign language (in fact, more than one: except from French, he also wrote in Spanish and Italian). It is obvious, then, that the general issue of exile, Horia’s main preoccupation within his entire literary work, also reflects his own tragic situation and stands for the difficult choices the author had to make during his lifetime. Often compared to Mircea Eliade, Eugen Ionescu or Emil Cioran, his contemporaries, Horia is another important representative of Romanian exile, even if his circumstances were less favorable as far as the reception of his work is concerned. In God Was Born in Exile, the Latin poet Ovid’s journey to Tomis mirrors Horia’s uprooting, but at the same time expresses a symbolic initiation – both of the protagonist and the author: during his eight years of exile, Ovid discovers not only the fundaments of Christian faith, but also the way to liberate himself from all the personal sorrows (and his youthful vain desires) and to firmly believe in his own literary art.
Admired by many readers for his narrative talent, contested by others for some of his political opinions, Panait Istrati (1884 – 1935) had to be recognized as a gifted writer and an accomplished ...storyteller in France, and only after that in his native Romania. His debut short story Kyra Kyralina (1924) is one of his best works, offering the Western reader an Oriental setting (comparable to The Arabian Nights), an exquisite plot and amazing characters. Besides, the author reshapes the old structure of the picaresque novel and thus his hero’s journeys are given an obvious initiatory meaning. At the same time, his characters witness a complex process of evolution, their specific (and radical) innocence being the perfect way to confront all the world’s challenges and hardships and to affirm their own system of (moral) values.
Vintilă Horia is one of the most interesting writers of the Romanian exile of the second half of the 20th century. His novel entitled God Was Born in Exile, published in 1960, explores the meanings ...of human uprooting under tragic circumstances and discusses exile (of the character and also of the author) as a tragic characteristic of mankind. Forced to live away from his native Romania because of the authoritarian regime imposed after 1945 in all Eastern European countries, Horia finds a symbolic version of his own life in Latin poet Ovid’s exile imposed by Augustus; therefore the protagonist of the novel gradually turns into the author’s alter-ego, being a lucid writer, completely assuming this painful uprooting and finding his true artistic identity precisely within exile, by the exquisite literary works he creates during the last years of his life.
