Harriet J. Bauman
The evolution of the modern short story is easily traced. It has its roots in legends and myths, as well as the oral tradition. The short story was known among the indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus as a popular tradition, not a literary one.
When the Spanish conquerors began colonizing the New World, they forbade the reading and publishing of fiction or profane works as a sacrilege to the Catholic faith that they were promoting. In spite of the ban, books of fiction such as picaresque novels, stories of shepherds and shepherdesses, and stories of knights were being read throughout the New World.
The first Spanish settlers brought popular stories, legends, and Spanish folklore with them to the Americas. They joined with the Portuguese, Catalans, Castillians, and Basques in forming the new settlements. This new society was a result of the fusion of the different cultures.
The Hispanic civilization of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries gave birth to chronicles, histories, and novelistic narrations which were classified as supernatural, humoristic, historical, and popular. The chroniclers who functioned as story tellers in the colonial period used Spanish themes and native reality in their works which made their writing quite original and unique.
The Eighteenth Century was not as rich in literature as the previous centuries because writing chronicles was out of style. During this century, history, philosophy, and criticism became the literature of Spanish America. The newspaper and journalism flourished.
During the Revolutionary era, and certainly after 1812, when freedom of the press became a reality, the sketches of manners and customs (
cuadros de costumbres
) became a means of criticizing the social conditions of colonies, and a way to teach a lesson to the readers.
The stories of José Joaqu’n Fernandez Lizardi, for example, were designed to correct the manners of his contemporaries, not to amuse them. In his book
El Periquillo Sarmiento
there are three real short stories. The first short story of the New World is considered to be “El negrito”. It has all the elements of a modern short story, as well as a major theme, racial prejudice.
Journalism had a great influence on the criticism of manners and customs (
el costumbrismo
). During the later colonial period there was much evidence of Spanish “costumbrismo” in the Spanish-American sketches. Spanish themes, such as popular types of characters and customs proliferated. But the new sketches went further. From a simple representation, the sketches were bitterly critical of governments, social backwardness, and the misery of the people.
The importance of these Spanish-American sketches in Latin American literature is that they formed the basis of the Latin American short story. At the very moment when a sketch became a discussion with a dramatic element, the short story was born.
It can be said that “el costumbrismo” was a romantic movement, in spite of its apparent realism. The critic, looking for originality in his society, gave life to the individual. Characteristics of romanticism found in these works are: scenic descriptions, local color, and the uniqueness of one’s surroundings, and characters.
Romanticism gave way to realism or modernism. The writers were now interested in social problems, and chose their protagoniste by the intensity of their societal woes. Descriptions of the surroundings or of individuals were objective. Most of the influences for this movement came from France and Spain.
“El criollismo” in Latin America was a reaction to modernism. The “criollietas” abandoned refined atmospheres and exotic themes to return to the land, nativism, and daily life. They were not imitators of Spanish or French writers, but inventors of new American themes and events. They made use of the countryside, customs, native characters and language as integral parts of the narrative. The development of the story was what interested them.
The “criollistas” wanted to reveal all the facets of American life within a work of art. Social protest was not a conscious element of their works.
After 1910 two groups of post modern short story writers emerged. One group redefined the technical elements of Creole stories, but retained American themes and atmosphere. The other group created a cosmopolitan ambiance, and concentrated on universal themes and events. For both of these groups the focus was the form of the story. The conflicts in these stories were personal, not social or political. The psychological problems of the characters were a principal trait of this literary period. At times a poetic element became noticeable. The European influences were English and French, among others.
The end of the Nineteenth Century and the beginning of the Twentieth Century saw a new movement, vanguardism, emerge. Vanguardism was tied to social changes and new tendencies in philosophy and the sciences. It was a reaction to natural realism and modernism in which the writer tried to express his inner being. Frequently the real world was incoherent to the writers, which led them to explore the inner self to find reality. This search led to movements such as cubism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism, creationism, and ultraism, all European in origin.
The Vanguard writers wanted to create a new style of writing which would express their new vision of the world that differed greatly from the modernists and realists. Their stories reflected a poetic reality, and were also poetic in structure. Men became poetic symbols seen outside of the natural laws that regulated the external world. The narrative which had been the heart of the short story, was displaced by the poetry of the content and the form of the short story.
A new type of story arose at the same time as Vanguardism. It treated themes such as social problems that affected Americans, the misery of the urban masses, the peasant fighting for a piece of land, the indians not integrated into the cultural life of the country, the Blacks trapped by their superstitions and traditions, and the fight against tyranny.
For the authors of the “social” story, style and technical questions were not of major importance. The content of their stories was of prime interest. The presentation of a vital experience was essential to their art.
The fantastic story, before Borges, appeared sporadically. The unreal themes and the development of the action were the major characteristics of this movement.
In the psychological story subjectiveness dominates objectiveness, thought dominates action, and the intellectual dominates the sentimental. The conflicts of the characters are personal. The surroundings are hardly mentioned. The themes are universal. The author’s all-knowing point of view directs the readers’ thoughts about the story. Sometimes the above technique is mixed with an indirect interior monologue. Stream-of-consciousness is an important element of the psychological story.
Both the fantastic and the psychological stories form the expressionist movement. Magical realism, however, avoids the supernatural, and man’s behavior is not explained through psychological analysis as in expressionism.
The expressionist wants to avoid reality by creating unreal worlds. The writer of magical realism, on the other hand, faces reality and tries to untangle its mysteries. Arturo Uslar-Pietri described magical realism as that which predominates in the story and leaves its traces in the consideration of man as a mystery in the middle of realistic information.
‘Lo que vino a predominar en el cuento y a marcar su huella de una manera perdurable fue la consideración del hombre como misterio en medio de los datos realistas. Una adivinación poética o una negación poética de la realidad. Lo que a falta de otra palabra podr’a llamarse un realismo mágico.’ (p. 130 Leal)
In magical realism key events have no apparent logical or psychological explanation. The magical realist tries to capture the mystery behind things. He extends his sensibilities as far as possible so as to pierce the inner core of existence for his reality.
The detective story was not successful with Latin American writers except for Borges. Some Argentinian, Chilean and Mexican writers have worked in this genre. The most successful detective stories are translations of Conan Doyle and Poe.
There are very few Latin American writers who write with humor for the sake of enjoyment. Latin American life does not permit the luxury of laughter, according to Leal. However, there are humoristic short story techniques, such as a brief introduction used after a humor-filled dialogue between characters, which is almost always based on the incongruencies of their lives. These characters are stereotypes, either of a social class or of a nation.
Since World War II a new realism (Neorealism) has emerged as a reaction to the subjectivism that preceded it. The neorealists rejected the fantastic, the magical, the symbolic, the abstract, etc. At the same time, they went farther than traditional realism. They included all reality no matter how repugnant, and were completely objective. They wrote without moral precepts. They wanted only to present human beings reactions to complex social situations.
The neorealistic short story is particularly interesting for the total absence of the author. It is totally impartial and objective in its format. Descriptions are cold and barren. The characters are not explained psychologically nor by the effect of their environment on them.
Today’s Latin American writers are building on the foundations left to them by all of the trends cited above. Some are using new techniques to go beyond their predecessors. Their stories focus on the unreal, the absurd, and the irrational world in which we live. Other stories reflect the new Latin American social reality. Social themes predominate today.
