Alfredo Bryce Echenique and the Decadence of the Myth of Paris Blanca Navarro Pardiñas Translated from the Spanish Language by Jon Regan

Chapter 10

Exile and Writing: Alfredo Bryce Echenique and the Decadence of the Myth of Paris Blanca Navarro Pardiñas Translated from the Spanish language by Jon Regan

Introduction

The idea that both civilizations and human beings experience stages of growth and climax, followed by periods of deterioration and decline, is very much engrained in the social imaginary. The concept of decadence, utilized by Edward Gibbon in the 1700s and later taken up by Oswald Spengler in the twentieth century, involves a sense of regression: it is the end of something that was once important. That being said, although the feeling of decadence is often associated with concrete moments in history (such as the decadence of Imperial Rome, or the end of a century1), in reality, this feeling is a constant variable for human beings, who at a given moment in their individual or collective history become conscious of the ineluctable passing of time and advancement toward death. This feeling of decadence and an awareness of death form a subtle dichotomy that remains intimately connected. Thus, together with the feeling of decadence we experience nostalgia for a better life, which can manifest itself in the search for a new place that symbolizes the idea of

D. Landgraf, Decadence in Literature and Intellectual Debate since 1945 © Diemo Landgraf 2014 188 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas progress, of a culture considered superior to that of the present, a religion of salvation, or even an original aesthetic proposal.2 This has been the case for numerous artists and writers who throughout human history have trav- eled abroad in search of creative freedom and the possibility of experiencing a certain feeling of artistic success. From time immemorial, humans have continuously dreamed of a utopian land in which dreams become reality and chaos can be dominated by an ideal order. The Garden of Eden, Utopia, and El Dorado are just some of the names that have inspired poets, novelists, philosophers, sailors, and perhaps even pedestrians. Beginning in the sixteenth century, and for hundreds of years to follow, America represented for Europeans a sort of lost paradise, a place where any dream seemed possible. However, since the mid-nineteenth century there has been a fundamental change in the imaginary world, and we now witness an inversion of this phenomenon: the old continent and the city of Paris in particular become utopian desti- nations, desired and dreamed about from America.3 Since the Middle Ages, the city of Paris has been an extraordinary place. With the appearance of the first medieval universities, such as the Sorbonne, Paris became for centuries a center of attraction for poets, paint- ers, philosophers, and intellectuals of all types. François Villon, François Rabelais, Pierre de Ronsard, Molière, Jean Racine, Voltaire, Marcel Proust, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir are just some of the figures whose intellectual itineraries cannot be dissociated from this great city. From the end of the 1800s and continuing throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Paris embodied for numerous American artists and intellectuals that new topos to be discovered, a place where anything seemed possible. Thus, we witness a revaluation of the image of Paris, which becomes a cultural Mecca and a mandatory destination for every self-respecting intellectual.4 As Henry Miller ironically used to say in reference to the writers of his time, everyone has lived in Paris at one time or another. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Stefan Zweig, and Ernest Hemingway, among many others, helped construct in this fashion the image of Paris as the undisputed center of twentieth-century culture. In return, the French capital provided them with a sense of freedom and unexpected celebrity.5 In an attempt to distance themselves from Latin American culture, numerous twentieth-century Latin American writers decided to voluntarily exile themselves in Paris.6 To live in Paris was considered synonymous with a life of splendor, in opposition to the decadence of their homeland, a world in which nothing more could be hoped for other than death: death of the critical spirit, censorship of the writer, death of our identity—a vast number of casualties that threaten to destroy a human being’s most inalienable Exile and Writing 189 reality: imagination. Consequently, the Parisian exile is converted into the promise of a new intellectual, artistic, and human life. Yet despite all of these promises, we see that some of the exiled Latin American writers, such as the Peruvian Alfredo Bryce Echenique, experienced in Paris what we could call a new feeling of decadence—not the feeling of being unable to write, as was the case in their countries of origin, nor the objective confirmation of a mythical city’s degradation, but rather the subjective feeling that life in this new world is falling apart once again, immersed in a chaos with no possible escape. Paris, in contrast to what they had expected, is transformed into the revelation of a new decadence, into the precursor to a new experience of decline, and even failure. As Josu Landa (119) indicates, the essential elements of the feeling of decadence were very much present among Latin Americans in the latter half of the twentieth century. This feeling was exacerbated greatly among Latin American intellectuals who, expecting to find a better world in Europe, and specifically in Paris, were faced with a reality that bore little resemblance to the mythical Paris, revolutionary and a leader of progress. As a concrete illustration of the experience of decadence in Paris during the 1960s, in this chapter we have chosen to address the theme of exile through the Parisian experience of Bryce’s characters. Indeed, the narratives of this great Peruvian novelist are a clear example of the city’s powerful attraction over Latin American writers in the mid-twentieth century.7 Taking the representation of Paris in Bryce’s novels as a starting point, we will analyze the shift from the traditional projection of an experience of splendor to the realization of an experience consisting of degradation and failure.

From Peru to Paris: In Search of a Better World

Throughout his distinguished career, Bryce has been a clear example of the intellectual who chooses to abandon his native country, Peru, finding himself not physically threatened, but rather destined to live a life with which he does not identify. For him Europe, and more specifically the city of Paris, became synonymous with being a writer. In contrast to exiled politicians facing the threat of physical death, the Peruvian writer experienced in his youth the threat of something equally alienating: the sacri- fice of his vocation as a writer should he surrender to the life of ease and conformity that characterizes the Peruvian oligarchy. Coming from one of 190 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas

Peru’s oldest and wealthiest families, Bryce likely experienced the anguish of growing up in a stifling environment in which the writing profession was scorned and frowned upon. Thus, the novelist has affirmed in numerous interviews that to dedicate himself to literature, he had to break material ties with his family and depart for Paris on a cargo ship, consequently creating a rupture that allowed him to achieve a sort of freedom. In Echenique’s novels, the French capital exerts an enormous power of fascination over his characters.8 The same author, in “Confesiones sobre el arte de vivir y escribir novelas,” affirms that he wished to write about Paris because

nunca he descubierto tanto hasta qué punto se es algo como en París. París es una ciudad que no sirve para otra cosa más que para mostrarle a uno hasta qué punto es extranjero, hasta qué punto es peruano, hasta qué punto aquel humor del que hablaba no sirve para nada, aquella oralidad tampoco entretiene, la cortesía es una pérdida de tiempo. (69)

The writers characterized in Bryce’s novels compel us to imagine and relive the life experiences of the author himself, although in doing so we must reiterate that what we read are not autobiographies, but rather works of fiction.9 In La vida exagerada de Martín Romaña, the narrator affirms that his father’s authoritarianism left him no other choice but to finish an entire university degree in law. After studying to become a lawyer in Lima to please his father, just as Bryce himself had done, the character of Martín Romaña decides to hang up his diploma and depart for the Sorbonne to study literature:

Creía al pie de la letra que una vida en Europa suponía una buena dosis de bohemia, para ser digna y provechosa. O para estar a la altura. Nunca se preguntó a la altura de qué, porque ese tipo de preguntas le era indiferente. Bastaba con creer en algo, y él había salido del Perú creyendo en eso. Todas sus informaciones culturales lo llevaban a creer en eso. Quería aprender muchas cosas, en la Universidad y fuera de ella, y quería vivir con la inten- sidad bohemia con que muchos otros, antes que él, habían vivido en París. Esta ciudad, en particular, se prestaba para ello, a decir de todo el mundo. Y Martín pensaba que se prestaba para ello hasta el punto de existir sólo para ello. París era una ciudad hecha solo para gente con sus ideas y convicciones. O sea con muchas ideas y convicciones contradictorias, aunque compatibles en cierto modo. Cada día, cada hora, era una fiesta en potencia, si uno deseaba tomar la vida así. Y desde París, también se podía largar uno a todas aquellas ciudades españolas, italianas. . . . Otros habían abierto la ruta. Él no tenía mas que seguir el ejemplo. . . . (51–52) Exile and Writing 191

And so he disembarks in France with the euphoria of an early European explorer, but not before experiencing a number of unexpected events. After enduring a shipwreck in the Panama Canal and a failed airplane trip that ends, following the loss of his passport, with Martin’s expulsion from Charles De Gaulle airport, we see him arrive at Dunkirk with un toque de Cristóbal Colón gritando:

-¡Tierra, tierra, yo la vi primero!, mientras un estibador me grita : -¡Ya pues oiga, quítese de en medio que no deja pasar! -¡Pero, señor, estoy desembarcando en la dulce Francia. Voy rumbo a la Ciudad Luz! - ¡Anda a que te den por el culo, hombre! (27)

Martín Romaña’s admiration for Paris, and for Europe in general, brings to mind the days in which sailors searched for El Dorado, directing their ships toward the Americas, in pursuit of an ideal world. For the Latin American intellectuals, this coveted paradise could be found in the old continent of Europe, and more precisely in the city of Paris. Bryce’s diptych Cuaderno de navegación en un sillón Voltaire reminds us in this way of the chronicles and historical narratives written by the Renaissance sailors. This is true in the case of Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his Naufragios y comentarios; it is also true of Christopher Columbus’s Diario de navegación. As in the classic shipwreck stories, the diptych Cuaderno de navegación en un sillón Voltaire is transformed into the expression of a narrative of failure. In opposition to the heroic discourse, in the style of Hernán Cortés, with its epic-military models taken from classical antiquity (for example, Julius Caesar), Bryce, like Núñez, presents us instead with a decadent model. It contrasts in this way with Columbus’s mythical discourse in his Diario de navegación about the heavenly America. Just like Núñez in the New World, Bryce fails to discover any mythical cities on the old continent, and instead encounters quite the opposite. In reality, although it was in Paris that Bryce was free to write as are the characters in his novels), and it was there that he could write with the plea- sure of being dedicated to literature after having left the oppressive world of Peru, it was also in Paris that he discovered the difficulty of being Latin American. This gap, both cultural and geographical, becomes the starting point of a new round of existential questioning, a new interpersonal dynamic in which the writer, upon finding himself in a different reality, rediscovers his own identity. It was in Paris that the writer felt foreign— foreign in relation to the French, foreign in relation to his own compatriots, 192 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas and, above all, foreign in relation to the very dream that prompted him to leave his home country. For Martín Romaña in La vida exagerada, Paris is also transformed “en una larga sesión de desencanto” (41). Paris, a city that is associated with the idea of culture and the opening of a new world, becomes an ambivalent city ruled by the most extreme contrasts:

París era la ciudad más bella del mundo. París era una fiesta alegre como ninguna hasta que nos agarraba aquel silencio al cruzar el puente Alejandro VI, nuestro favorito. Y París era, también, la ciudad más cómica y ridícula del mundo, dos o tres veces por semana, cuando encontrábamos sobre la mesita de la cocina tres o cuatro manzanas medio podridas que madame Forestier le había dejado tan generosamente a su guardián para que se hiciera una compota con las manzanas que a ella le habían parecido ya demasiado podridas para la compota de sus hijitas. (168–169)

As we have just noted, in Bryce’s narratives we witness an inversion of El Dorado, which is embodied not in America, but in Paris. Just like the chroniclers, who describe the wonders of the new continent using inter- textual references to well-known works such as the Bible or Greco-Roman mythology, Bryce describes the old world through a range of very particular texts. In effect, the origin of Paris’s idealization can be found in French songs, cinema, and literature.10 As Martín Romaña says, Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer also “se encargó de eternizar” the “eterna primavera parisina,” and the Alliance française introduced him to “general De Gaulle, cual sonriente arcangelote” that “bendecía este mundo made in France” (189). Additionally, the French songs, “las voces de la Piaf, de Maurice Chevalier, de Yves Montand, de Juliette Greco, y . . . tantas otras glorias, jamás se ocup- aron de las glorias de madame Labru,” also known as madame Labruja, the “vieja malvada” (188) whom Martín remembers “por lo mucho que a través de ella aprendimos de París” (189). If Martín Romaña’s Paris is opposed to that of French songs, its ideal image also contrasts with the Paris described in his literature classes in Lima with his professor Merceditas. Proust, Racine, and Hemingway, who “me había enseñado a soñar con ese París tan suyo” (84), are the points of reference of a Paris that is idealized by the young Peruvian. Hemingway had invented a marvelous Paris, “una maravillosa mentira literaria, Hemingway fue un genial mentiroso sofisticado como dirá Cocteau, y había inventado un París como Stendhal inventó un territorio de la pasión que se llamó Italia” (69–70). In contrast to these literary and artistic myths, the reality would be much different. Whereas Pedro, in Tantas veces Pedro, resides in a house Exile and Writing 193 where the idealized Racine had supposedly lived, Martín Romaña’s initial dwellings in Paris are far from idyllic. He stays first in a small hotel, where the “problema era la ducha” (32) and the filthiness of the owners who “olían pésimo los dos,” and from which he is almost evicted for showering every day because, as the administrator says, “nadie se ducha todos los días si no lleva contraída una grave enfermedad tropical” (35). As the narrator appropriately puts it in an imaginary conversation with his now deceased literature professor, “Nada de esto estaba previsto en Racine, Merceditas” (33). The amiability of the French is tossed out the window in similar fashion when at the Sorbonne, which “no era la iglesia, pero me sentía como quien se santigua,” he is attended to by “un mellizo del administrador del hotel, cosa que tampoco estaba prevista en Racine, Merceditas” (34). Furthermore, Martín Romaña’s exceptionally cultured mother, who arrives in Paris “a visitar los grandes hoteles en que se había alojado durante su juventud, cuando viajaba con sus padres, y a alquilar un automóvil para la peregrinación hasta la casa de Proust, en Illiers” (233), is also surprised upon confirming “lo cochinos que son los franceses. Cuánta razón tenía mi pobre papacito, él siempre decía que los franceses se bañan sólo cuando salen de viaje. Y viajan muy poco, hijita, me decía” (249). Nevertheless, in light of this seemingly scathing critique of a decadent Paris, the truly hilarious aspect of the ordeal is made apparent a little later when Martín Romaña’s mother, who because of her cultured background and refined education boasts of not being fooled by cli- chés, declares “al cabo de tres botellas de vino,” and following a conde- scending “Hijito, lo poco que conoces a los franceses” (248), that Proust “era probablemente uno de los pocos franceses que se bañaba” (249). Accordingly, any previous thoughts that Bryce’s purpose is to offer a severe critique of French society must be declared erroneous. Bryce, master of the art of irony, forces us to doubt the nature of his true inten- tions, and succeeds at poking fun not only at the French but also at his own mother. Despite the apparently scathing nature of its descriptions of Paris, the Brycean critique is never fueled by anger and is always subject to an ambiguous underlying tone, which lightens its emotional charge. In fact, it is because of this irony and humor that Bryce’s characters manage to move forward in a Paris that is otherwise fraught with disappointment. Unquestionably, the city's ambivalent image is summed up perfectly in the following commentary by Martín Romaña in La vida exagerada: “Me gusta París, a quién no, pero sé que hay algo que terminará expulsán- dome de esta ciudad en la que he sido pobre, joven y feliz, algo más rico y algo menos joven, realmente feliz y profundamente infeliz” (194). Paris 194 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas embodies the idea of ambiguity. As he himself says, “el que me entienda, que me siga” (195).

Exiled Latin Americans in Paris

Faced with a collapsing mythical Paris, one would expect, as a counter- point, the image of Latin America to be revitalized. However, in the novels of Bryce things are never so simple; his profoundly ironic perspective has several surprises in store for us. In effect, if Martín Romaña is a Peruvian who discovers, just as Bryce himself did, to what extent one is “extranjero y punto” in Paris, what is interesting is that Martín Romaña discovers, in addition, to what extent one can be foreign and marginal among one’s own compatriots. In this manner, if Paris and the Parisians appear demystified, the Latin Americans residing in Paris are not far behind. In Bryce’s novels, the myth of Paris is no longer a myth destroyed by itself “desde dentro” due to the very passing of time. For Bryce, the city's decadence is no longer exclusively the work of the French.11 As a voluntarily exiled writer in Paris, Bryce discovered in the French capital a new symbolic space that allowed him, in turn, to see his own point of reference from a new perspective, transformed by distance and time. In this Parisian exile, there is an exchange of glances that scrutinize, observe, and question. His novels can thus be seen as a clear manifestation of this synergy that is created due to the coexistence of different cultures. Consequently, a disappointed Martín Romaña had to make a thousand keys to his small Parisian apartment with its little kitchen and bathroom,

para que media colonia estudiantil peruana instalada en un hotel sin baños que quedaba en la esquina de su casa pudiera ducharse porque los muchachos eran de izquierda, y no hay nada más reaccionario en el mundo que un baño propio y no compartirlo. Pero debo reconocer que para mí significó mucho el que tanta gente se bañara en mi casa. Me hablaban de guerrilleros, me hablaban de Fidel Castro, y me hablaban de mi padre anteponiendo siempre la expresión de hijo de puta. Durante un tiempo traté de defend- erme alegando haber estudiado en San Marcos, la universidad del pueblo, el pulmón del Perú, pero los muchachos eran tercos y fue difícil transar con ellos. O yo era un reaccionario de mierda, o mi padre era un hijo de puta porque yo tenía un departamento con baño. Opté por lo segundo porque así se vivía más tranquilo. (36)

Sartre, along with other philosophers before him such as Martin Heidegger and Søren Kierkegaard, insisted that the opinions of others, of society, are Exile and Writing 195 of great importance when constructing an image of oneself. The view of others brings me into existence, it judges and defines me. In the case of Martín Romaña, it is the critical observations of other Latin Americans that force him to create a false personality as a reactionary: “El infierno son los demás,” wrote Sartre in his celebrated play Huis-clos. The “Grupo,” as the leftist Latin American friends of Martín Romaña’s wife call themselves, is transformed, paradoxically, into a group with totalitarian ten- dencies.12 As Martín goes on to say, it was not easy to be consistent with their ideas in those days, and there were often heated arguments, even fatal disputes, “pero todo el mundo se volvía a encontrar y hacía las paces el día que pagaban la beca. Era el mejor día del mes . . . ” (37). In Bryce’s novels, Paris is converted into the center of attraction for numerous Latin American intellectuals. The association between Paris and the world of revolutionary freedom is connected to the attraction that the French capital exerts over them. Paris is the emblem and heir of the 1789 revolution, and it stands as the city of freedom and progress. Paris enjoys, therefore, a unique status as a beacon for humanity in its revolutionary battles for a world of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. The French capital represents the center of human values.13 This mythical country of liberty, equality, and fraternity is, however, also a hive of activity for numerous Latin American pseudointellectuals who exploit their image as exiles in order to obtain important positions in their respective countries, or to obtain economic favors. Thus, exile in Bryce’s work is multifaceted. From the fraud to the true revolutionary, and even including the naive professor who simply aspires to write and be loved, the literary representation of the exiled Latin American is not one dimensional. Bryce, true to his critical spirit, ironic and controversial, imagines a wide range of colorful characters. La vida exagerada de Martín Romaña deals with the unmasking of a world of shameless impostors who hide behind the magical word exile. In effect, this term, which is so often used in literary criticism in expressions such as escritores del exilio, literatura del exilio, and so forth, is now inverted in an apparent satire of a social group that more closely resembles a circle of swindlers than an intellectual elite. Indeed, Bryce frequently cites the master of the Spanish picaresque genre, Francisco de Quevedo. Like the chivalrous characters in El Buscón llamado Don Pablos, the pseudointellectuals of Bryce’s novels do whatever they can to benefit themselves through the manipulation of appearances.14 Among the exiled characters living in Paris we find Lagrimón, Roberto López, who Martín says “tenía hambre de buen turrón y hambre también de señora de la buena sociedad limeña, qué otra explicación cabía a que se pasara la tarde sentado en nuestro departamento, desde que la conoció” 196 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas

(239). Lagrimón apparently represents the typical Peruvian scrounger residing in Paris, who

de golpe había descubierto que el mayor deseo de su vida era convertirse en psicoanalista almidonado, sin bombas en su pasado, y hasta francés, . . . de señoras como mi señora madre, tan enfermas de evocación, tan exquisitas en el pago, tan llenas de inexistentes problemas que yo, Roberto López, les resolveré algún día. Pobre mamá, francamente la estaban engañando de entrada . . . y yo dejé a Roberto López detectado como hombre de gran futuro en el campo del psicoanálisis peruano. (239–240)

In this decadent game of appearances, some of these Latin American pseudointellectuals attempt to make others believe that they live in battle against an authoritarian regime, in solidarity with the working class and the exiles; the reality, however, is much different. Thus, according to the “Grupo,”

para ser militante, bueno o malo, se necesitaba abandonar París, regresar al Perú y, una vez allá, empuñar las armas o algo así. Yo vi partir a muchos con ese fin, pero la verdad es que después, con el tiempo, me fui enterando de que lo único que habían empuñado era un buen puesto en un ministe- rio. Claro, es el drama de las clases medias, es el drama de Latinoamérica, y no hay que amargarse tanto, todo se explica, hay también otros, los verdaderos. (113)

In response to these decadent and decrepit pseudointellectuals, however, Bryce does not put forth an alternative model of a committed intellectual. Indeed, the verdaderos, as Martín calls them, also appear in a very unat- tractive light:

llegaban jodidos, deportados, recién salidos de la cárcel, muy golpeados, pero no bien bajaban del avión empezaban a organizar cosas y a caminar como si nunca jamás los fuera a atropellar un auto. A veces se acercaban a las reuniones del Grupo y se dirigían a nosotros con un ca-ma-ra-da lento y grave, para que todo fuera dicho siempre con gran claridad, y después se iban al secreto y uno se quedaba tembleque y empezaba a comprender a Marx más que nunca. (113)

Through these conniving characters, Bryce attacks not the political dic- tatorships of Latin America, but rather the very functioning of human thought, which is at times reduced to a production line of clichés. The “Grupo” appears to be formed by a conglomerate of “hombres serios,” apparently immune to critique and sure of themselves.15 Nevertheless, Martín, in spite of his silence, is very much aware that their Exile and Writing 197 world is artificial, fragile, and worthy of criticism. Thus, in Bryce’s novel, the character of Inés Romaña and her group of intolerant friends are treated ironically by the narrator, who laughs at those who are inflexible.16 The characters of the so-called Group are ridiculed through the use of hyperbole. They are presented as absurd beings. Let us consider “Pies Planos,” the young Peruvian militant living in Paris who puts Martín in charge of writing a novel about the fishermen’s union in Peru. Pies Planos becomes so obsessed with orienting his entire life around the political activ- ities of the Group, that he himself is transformed into a monstrous tyrant incapable of maintaining normal, loving relationships. Consequently, his Tunisian girlfriend ends up running away from him because “la estaba obligando a abandonar sus estudios de literatura y quería que entrara a militar con un grupo de peruanos . . . se niega a leer cualquier cosa que no tenga que ver con la política peruana” (282–283). Bryce directs his irony toward all thought that becomes stagnant, regardless of how revolutionary or innovative it may have been in the beginning. The exaggerated seriousness with which the exiled militants live each and every insignificant action of their daily lives transforms them into slaves to their own ideology.17 Bryce’s irony highlights the contradiction between the Group’s aspirations and its achievements. The supposed liberation that should result from having blind faith in a set of ideals (either revolutionary or otherwise) is transformed, conversely, into an unbearable restraint. Thus, the Parisian exile of Bryce’s imagination is a decadent world in which paradox reigns supreme. Bryce subjects Paris and Parisians to the same degree of scrutiny as his Latin American compatriots and their respective contradictions. Neither group has anything to envy of the other. Bryce adopts a distant perspective, which is both critical and entertain- ing; he observes everything, but proposes nothing if not the same ironic attitude as a means of facing the feeling of decadence. The construction, or more appropriately the destruction, of the myth of Paris through Bryce’s writings thus ends up being highly original as a result of the author’s original ironic tone, leading us to imagine a Paris in decline, a decline that is as much French as it is Latin American.

Revolutions and Revolutionaries: The Other Face of May 1968

The decadent image of the mythical city of Paris appears again in Bryce’s portrayal of the historic protests of May 1968, presented through the 198 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas writings of Martín Romaña.18 The disillusionment that followed this event manifests itself in allusions to the people who are found in an antro located on La Rue Mouftard: “Estos que veis aquí señores fueron de la imaginación al poder y de regreso están de algún viaje al fondo de la India y ahora, per- ros tristes, se instalan confortablemente en el alcoholismo francés” (165). The sadness that surrounds these classes who fought for that ideal—“la imaginación al poder”—is made apparent in similar fashion when, in the same filthy restaurant, with posters “íntegramente cubiertos por la grasa del tiempo,” Martín states: “No bien algo me produce una tristeza infinita, me convierto en un hombre de izquierda. O en un enfermo de izquierda” (165). After a great deal of “borrachera verbal, intuitiva, hermosa y poética, más tirada a lo Rimbaud que a lo Verlaine” (285), the youth of ’68, who in their day wore “barbas, pelambres y atuendos que un día fueron de orgullo, fueron arrogantes, en granjas, en comunidades erótico-yerberas,” are now seen converted into old leftists

sin carné alguno, un viejo lobo de mar pero con seguridad social, y por donde va cae cansado, cansado de buscar y de no encontrar el territorio de la pasión, el único que habría podido recompensarlo por el generosísimo tinglado que armó, increíble tener que decirlo así, allá por el 68, con ayuda de la primavera y de la masa amorfa que lo envolvía incómodamente con el nombre de sociedad de consumo. . . . Lo cierto es que después llegó el verano y todo el mundo necesitaba partir de vacaciones. Después llegó el otoño, que con tanto color tristón no era el mejor momento para empezar de nuevo. Y después el invierno, que sin color mayor, ni menor tampoco, tampoco era el momento más propicio. Y cuando volvió a llegar la primavera, pues se cumplía ya el primer aniversario de aquella célebre primavera rebelde que sacudió Francia, me cagó. (285)

The seriousness and efficacy of this social movement are left completely beaten down to the ground. At the time of the protests, French diplomat and intellectual Alfred Sauvy informed the young heroes of May 1968 why their actions were ineffective: that the events were realized in sadness, without the slightest appearance of a smile.19 As the Venezuelan poet and essayist Josu Landa indicates, “la actitud decadentista en el siglo XX aparece como fruto de una profunda desilusión, de un hondo sentimiento colectivo de decepción ante las derivaciones de variada índole de las formaciones culturales de la posguerra” (117). Parallel with the pacifist and ecological movements of the postwar period, we see a negative reflection that undermines their optimist tone. Thus, Landa observes that the atomic threat, the reckless consumption of drugs, and the disillusionment with the historical promises offered by large social Exile and Writing 199 redemption projects such as Marxism and socialism all strengthen our feel- ings of helplessness as we face a world that appears to be out of control and that we are incapable of confronting with energy and lucidity. It is in this feeling that we find what could be called, once again using Landa’s expression, “el sentimiento de decadencia” (119). It is this feeling which reflects Martín Romaña’s Parisian experience. In La vida exagerada de Martín Romaña, the narrator’s ironic attitude is made apparent in the form of allusions to events, along with their causes and consequences. Martín Romaña himself is transformed into a carica- ture of May 1968. After a great deal of uncertainty, he decides to take to the streets “a ver si encontraba a Inés y me contagiaba un poco de la nueva juventud y cambiaba mi aspecto mediotíntico por una buena cara de póster.” To this end he buys “el blue jean más indicado del mundo. Estaba listo: bigotudo, barba creciente, pelambre bastante creciente. Bueno, sólo me faltaba despeinarme y ensuciarme un poco el pelo. Procedí, ayudándome de un poquito de saliva y de polvo que recogí en el Jardín de Luxemburgo. Listo” (290–291). But his nonsensical adventure does not stop there. The irony of fate would have it that Romaña find himself among a group of gesticulators

llenecitos de ademanes anticulturales. Para ellos, y como gozaba yo apren- diendo tanto de ellos, la palabra debía ser parte del discurso dominante, abajo con la palabra, no sólo hay que sexualizar la vida, hay que gestualizar también el cuerpo, el cuerpo tiene que encontrar su expresión, su lenguaje, algo que destruya para siempre el discurso-carga cultural y rechace toda tentativa de diálogo por parte del Gobierno, abajo con el Gobierno, el gesto al poder. (291)

And so Bryce, who hides behind the narrator-character Martín, makes the protagonist the perfect victim of his irony. Martín, as a result of his ingenuousness, is ridiculed to the extreme when he is informed by angry onlookers that this group is nothing more than a school of deaf mutes and that if he does not leave immediately, they will call the police. Irony can be seen as the best way to avoid succumbing to a decadent atmosphere such as the one faced by Martín Romaña. It involves looking at reality and laughing at it, rather than taking things too seriously. Only in this way can decadence be converted into something aesthetic, into an intellectual game. Thus, if Bryce pokes fun at his characters, he is also poking fun at himself when he portrays Martín Romaña demonstrating with a group of deaf mutes, while hurling mental wads of spit “contra Bryce Echenique, contra las medias tintas” (p. 293). Martín strains to direct his fiercest hatred toward Bryce for being a writer capable of remaining seated 200 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas at his desk while the Parisian youth of 1968 battle within the barricades: “Logré desviar el escupitajo hacia la cara de Bryce Echenique, a quien imaginé en voz alta durmiendo tranquilamente para poder seguir escribi- endo al día siguiente. O en las barricadas, si le daba la gana, pero jamás enfrentado a una partida de imbéciles tan grande” (295). The height of irony is reached, therefore, due to the fact that Martín is not even fighting for an ideal, but in reality is doing all of this to please his wife, Inés, who cannot stand those who are not involved in the famous revolution.20 In this way we witness the skepticism of the narrator Martín, for whom May 1968 is reduced to a true phenomenon of the masses in which the protesters act based on imitation, without any true objectives. He even comes to declare “que venga Proust sin tanta marquesa y sin tanto asma para recuperar todo este tiempo perdido” (286). The novelist quietly observes the decadence of the revolutionary ideals held by the intellectuals, both French and Latin American, during May 1968, and at the same time he does not hesitate to make himself a target of his own critiques. Thus, Martín observes the false motivations that facili- tated the events of 1968, and he is permitted to criticize and rebuke Bryce Echenique himself, who has been converted into a fictional character:

Soñabas con tener cara de slogan, caminada de blue jean, barba y pelambre, mirada de activista, pinta de póster, claro que soñabas más bien despierto que dormido, en el sentido más literal de la palabra, porque con la excusa de que no había tiempo para dormir, pues dormir era burgués, corrías tus insomnios por las calles soñando que te parecías al Che Guevara, cuando barricadeabas, y a Jean-Paul Sartre, cuando escribías. (286–287)

With his depiction of May 1968, Bryce exposes not only the cliché of Paris as a cultural and intellectual paradise and the often hypocritical and high-handed self-perception of the Latin American expatriate intelligentsia but also one of the central myths of modern progressivism, which, in the end, turns out to be false, superficial, and a manifestation of decadence.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, the writings of Bryce are never self-satisfied, and if the representation of Paris as the promised land collapses, Bryce himself appears as one of the fictitious agents of this decadence. The writer knows how to capture the complexity of reality, like a paradox whose inexpli- cableness always remains clear. The myth of Paris is broken down and Exile and Writing 201 it emerges remodeled in his writings. If in the first half of the twentieth century the brutal collision between the ideal Paris and the real Paris favored the apparition of new utopias in the Hispano-American “novela de la tierra,” valuing once again the myth of nature,21 in the case of Bryce the destruction of Paris’s utopian image is accompanied, additionally, by a critique of the excesses that can result from the exploitation of these mythical images on the part of Latin Americans themselves. Paris is neither the City of Light, as Martín Romaña had hoped upon arriving in France, nor is Latin America the world of “El cóndor pasa” with an Andean poncho. In the writings of Bryce we would dare to say that the myth of Paris reaches a level that we could label postutopic. For the Brycean characters, decadent Paris has lost its magnetic attraction, only to be converted into a topos imperfecto, a place that must be reinvented. It is there that we find another of Bryce’s contributions to the myth of Paris. For him, the act of fleeing Peru in search of fantastical utopias is destined for failure. His novels allow us to reflect upon the construction of reality itself and the limits of utopian projects. If the classical utopias suggested a group of certainties, a paradise found, the Brycean narrative obliges us to think about the world in another way: Paris yes, but an ambiguous Paris.

Notes

1. In literature, as is well known, the term “decadence” was used to describe the work of nineteenth-century fin de siècle writers whose style was considered cunning and artful. This label was embodied and accepted by authors as celebrated as Charles Baudelaire, Joris-Karl Huysmans (cf. chapters 8 and 11 of the present book), and Oscar Wilde. 2. For more information on this subject, cf. Brémard/Rolland (9). 3. With regard to the “American dream,” its decadence, and the homo Americanus, cf. chapter 2 in the present book. 4. Cf. Casanova’s study of literary sociology, which indicates that the recognition of a literary work depends largely on geopolitical factors, power relationships, and give and take between dominant and suppressed cultures. 5. In Latin American literature, the myth of Paris emerges in the mid-nineteenth century as a paradigm of the search for identity, and evolves to the point where it is later transformed into a paradigm of the artificial. See the interesting article by Cristóbal Pera. 6. As Jean-Claude Villegas (69) recalls, the act of wanting to find a place in the arts outside one’s national borders involves, in the case of Hispano- Americans, identifying oneself with the European models, and associating with centers of production and integrating into their circles. This is likely the 202 Blanca Navarro Pardiñas

case of modernist writers in Paris, such as Rubén Darío. A stay in Paris is part of the ritual of a trip to Europe, a phenomenon that already appears in the nineteenth century. And more so than Madrid, Paris is a centre of attraction for being the birthplace of the revolution (cf. 73). 7. In April 2005, Cuadernos hispanoamericanos dedicated a complete dossier to the theme of Paris in Latin American literature, confirming that Paris con- tinues to be very much present in Latin American literature; thus, it is asked ironically whether “París no se acaba nunca” with a clear allusion to the title of Enrique Vila-Matas’s novel (2003). 8. The theme of Paris in the work of Bryce has interested numerous critics. We can highlight, among others, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Ricardo Gutiérrez Mouat, François Delprat, María Lourdes Cortés, Carlos Morelli Samánez, and Marcy Swartz. 9. We are thinking particularly of Martín Romaña, Pedro Balbuena, and Max Gutiérrez, protagonists of Bryce’s novels La vida exagerada de Martín Romaña, Tantas veces Pedro y Reo de nocturnidad, respectively. 10. With respect to this topic, cf. Villegas. 11. According to Mario Vargas Llosa (99), “Esta es una de las más importantes funciones de la literatura: recordar a los hombres que, por muy firme que par- ezca el suelo que pisan y por más radiante que luzca la ciudad que habitan, hay demonios escondidos por todas partes que pueden, en cualquier momento, provocar un cataclismo.” 12. Concerning the totalitarian character of leftist progressivism, especially with regard to poststructuralism and deconstruction, cf. chapter 4 of the present book. 13. Despite France’s colonial past in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, and despite the Mexican adventure of Napoleon III, the country’s fame for being the land of asylum and freedom has been infallible. With respect to this theme, see the previously mentioned study by Jean-Claude Villegas (89). 14. As Casas de Faunce (203–205) points out, however, the Latin American picaresque novel has its own unique features, such as the contribution of political themes to the genre. Note: “En Latinoamérica, la picaresca se nutre de los ataques contra las clases altas, la aristocracia del dinero, del poder o de la sangre.” 15. We are forced to think of Jean-Paul Sartre and his Critique de la raison dialec- tique, in which he makes an entire study regarding the concept of the grupo. For Sartre, who also appears as a character in La vida exagerada, the grupo is one of the most fundamental social realities; it is characterized by the fact that it transcends the material conditions of the individual to reach a com- mon objective. In the case of Inés Romaña’s Grupo this objective is more than questionable. 16. Philosophers such as Hegel are critical of the serious man, the man who ideal- izes systems and institutions, and who denies his own identity when faced with everything which he considers sacred and untouchable. Kierkegaard also ironically denounces the reality that hides behind the mask of seriousness. Exile and Writing 203

Thus, he mocks the words and gestures of serious men, who are immersed in an untouchable logic and morality, insensitive to criticism and overflowing with the feeling that they themselves are very important. Following the line of Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre in L’être et le néant also launches a fierce critique of the homme sérieux, the man who takes everything he does seriously, avoiding any sort of questioning that could threaten the tranquility and security in his everyday life. In his novel La Nausée, the homme sérieux appears embodied in the character of the bourgeois. 17. Through these examples we can observe what some philosophers, such as Kierkegaard, consider the essence of irony: to make apparent the finite and limited nature of our aspirations toward that which is absolute and infinite. Cf. Kierkegaard. 18. Cf. Bousquet. Concerning the significance of May 1968 cf. also chapters 1 and 8 in the present book. 19. “Savez-vous pourquoi vous risquez l’isolement tragique? Parce que vous êtes tristes. Si vous aviez le souci de construire avec le sourire, vous transformer- iez le monde et nous vous suivrions tous” (Elgozy 199). According to Sauvy, moral attitudes, humour, and non-violence are situated on two parallel planes; humour is on the plane of intellectualism and mental higiene, whereas non- violence is on that of political and social action. 20. Martín, as a non-revolutionary, has no other escape but to resort to humour in order to make apparent that he does not allow himself to be fooled and that he has conserved his critical spirit. 21. See the previously mentioned article by Cristóbal Pera.

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