Ethics, Poetics, and the Emergence of the Subject in César Vallejo, Octavio Paz, and Juan Gelman
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Ethics, Poetics, and the Emergence of the Subject in César Vallejo, Octavio Paz, and Juan Gelman A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Félix Vázquez May 2013 © 2013 Félix Vázquez Rivera Ethics, Poetics, and the Emergence of the Subject in César Vallejo, Octavio Paz, and Juan Gelman Félix Vázquez, Ph. D. Cornell University 2013 In this dissertation I explore the intersection between ethics and poetics, and attempt a reading where the enunciating voice that emerges from this intersection points towards what I will call a "po/ethical subject". In the first chapter I set up an initial theoretical departure point for the definition of this "po/ethical subject", starting with the notion of the "face-to-face" encounter with the Other as the primary element in the dynamics of subject-constitution elaborated by Emmanuel Levinas. To round off the discussion I look at the "constitutive factors on any speech act" defined by Roman Jakobson, the relationship between language and contingency elaborated by Giorgio Agamben, and the notion of textual pleasure and desire advanced by Roland Barthes. The second chapter is a reading of the poetic oeuvre of César Vallejo that traces the instances where the subject that emerge seems to ultimately take the form of a dismembered body. The third chapter is a reading of the earlier poems of Octavio Paz, where the constitution of the subject is marked by the relation of the subject himself with his body as a ruin and as a site of ruins. The fourth chapter is a reading of Juan Gelman, where the emerging subject seems to grasp his fragmentary nature in order to reconstitute himself as a potentiated subject. The conclusion brings together the theoretical concepts as they have developed once confronted with the poem as praxis, so I can reach a more complete definition of what a po/ethical subject might be. Following Argentine critic and novelist Ernesto Sabato, I finish the dissertation proposing the notion of resistencia —"resistance", "endurance"— as a way to respond to the summons of the Other, resisting the temptation of indifference and resignation, integrating contingency and poetry in an concluding call to "po/ethical resistance". Biographical Sketch Félix Vázquez Rivera was born July 16, 1976 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Son of Félix Vázquez Rivera and Laura Rivera Correa, brother to Nilma Vázquez Rivera, and husband to Limarí Rivera Ríos, he holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, and a Doctorate in Romance Studies from Cornell University. i A mi levinaseada, gelmaneada, y tarumbeada D. d. H. A Limarí. A Mamá. A Papá. ... y a ti, que vienes, chiquitito / chiquitita, que espero, que ya estás aquí y que no acabas de llegar: por ti y para ti. ii Acknowledgments My utmost gratitude to all who, in one way or another, helped me during my stay at Cornell and made it possible for this dissertation to come to fruition. Among all, I give special thanks to the members of my committee, Professors Debra Castillo, Gerard Aching, and Jonathan Monroe for their mentorship. They subtracted from the whole research and writing process most of the anxiety I feared, and added to it more enjoyment than I expected. I also thank Professor José María Rodríguez for his kind and generous help during my first years at Cornell and his continued friendship thereafter... Rebecca Davidson and the staff at Romance Studies for making sure I remembered everything I always kept forgetting... all of my fellow grad students, course coordinators, and students... To all, again, my utmost gratitude. iii Table of Contents Biographical Sketch i Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Towards a Po/Ethics of the Subject 22 Chapter 2 The Poetry of Vallejo: Man and his Ethical Foundation in Language, Pain, and Shadows 70 Chapter 3 Octavio Paz and the Creation of the I: the Ethics of the Body-to-Body 137 Chapter 4 Juan Gelman, or Ethics as First Poetics 215 Conclusions 274 Works Cited 296 iv Introduction In the 20th century some of the most influential Latin American poets chose to enter the ranks of clandestine armed movements to fight against the repression of their countries' governments. Opting for this alternative, these poets chose to integrate their active political engagement and advocacy for concrete social change — “revolutionary” change most of the times— to their own literary proposals. In the ideal identity created in their poetry the subject is forged in "the struggle" for a better world. The sacrifice of the poet who gives his/her life for the "just cause" becomes the ultimate price of freedom, gladly paid by the combatant. It is possible to trace this impetus of social poetry in Latin America at least to the writings of the late colonial/early independence movements; however, it seems to me that it is with the writings of José Martí and the early stages of modernismo that lyric poetry and social engagement began to reach a level of ethical inquiry centered in the individual rather than the Nation. That is, the individual still sacrificed himself1 for his nation, but his sacrifice began to be more the result of the individual’s relation with present reality than with destiny. From Latin American romanticism to modernismo there is, thus, an ethical shift of focus in poetry. The subject that emerges in this 1 From this point forward I will use the masculine when referring to a general subject regardless of gender, although indeed constructions of nationality in Latin America posited the masculine as the primary trait of the honorable subject of the oftentimes feminine Homeland who required from her sons the defense of her honor. As it falls outside of the scope for this dissertation, I leave such a critique for further development elsewhere and at another time. 1 poetry asks himself about the ethical position of his “I” in the surrounding universe. Latin America in the XXth century is this surrounding universe, and it has a history that modulates the subjects who inhabit it. Although the roots of this shift of focus lie earlier in time, I will begin my exploration of the intersection of ethics and poetics in Latin America in the 20th century with César Vallejo, perhaps the most influential of the century’s poets. Generations of poets initiated their poetic inquiries departing from the direct relation between language and contingency they found in Vallejo, who himself found in the Spanish Civil War the ethical imperative that would transform his poetry. After Vallejo and the experience of war, the “ivory tower” from where a strand of modernist poetry configured its relation with the world would be reduced to cinders. To continue my exploration I turn to Mexico and to a poet who, as a public figure, is usually not immediately associated with a poetry of ethical import. If in his first writings Octavio Paz began constructing his identity in a similar tendency than Vallejo towards the integration of political inquiry into the poetic text, he did not wait long before distancing his poetics from the aesthetic appreciation and critique of social reality. This was a conscious distancing by Paz in order to seek the representation of other realities in his poems, and analysis of the modes in which these had congealed so as to become what is known as modernity. Moreover, despite the later Paz's disdain for modern revolutions —and the modern poetry usually associated with such political programs— and advocacy for a poetry exempt from 2 socio-political commitment beyond the poetic as an aesthetic value in itself, an ethical subject emerges, though certainly not a subject who shares Vallejian ethos. To finish my exploration on Latin American poets, I turn my attention to the particular case of Argentina, where the takeover of power by the military junta in 1976 led several of the nation's most recognized literary figures to join the armed resistance, including Juan Gelman, the initiator and most relevant writer of Argentina's "generación del 60". It is notable how, when his individual circumstances might lead one to believe his poetry would turn to condemnation after the "disappearance" of his son, daughter-in-law, and unborn granddaughter, Gelman's poetry in fact moves away from the aesthetics of socialist realism, and from exile seeks the influence of the tradition of mystical poetry in an introspective turn. The first presupposition that I make in the dissertation is, then, that there is in fact a subject that emerges from the poetic text. The text must then be prior than the subject that emerges from it. This will be a literary subject who will be crossed by an ethics and a poetics. The study of the ethical dimension of this subject had limited itself to, more times than not, making the immediate connection between political engagement and poetical thematics. This approach, if useful and necessary in its time, soon loses its innovative drive and ceases to shed light on the reading of literature. As Francine Masiello writes: 3 condicionados por el imperativo político (promovido especialmente por la conciencia social que emerge en la crítica literaria a partir de los años 60) esperamos encontrar detrás de cada verso una raíz que conduzca al corazón de lo ‘real’ [...] este tipo de lectura, transparente y simplista, que convirtió a la lírica casi en un fetiche de consumo [...] nos llevó a exigir, de alguna manera, que la poesía estuviera en diálogo directo con el pensamiento político [...] Estas lecturas siempre me parecieron profunda e irremediablemente equivocadas (Masiello 11).