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Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in the Global Era in the Fictions of Mario Vargas Llosa

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Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in the Global Era in the Fictions of Mario Vargas Llosa University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2021-01 Belonging Beyond Borders: Cosmopolitan Affiliations in Contemporary Spanish American Literature Bilodeau, Annik University of Calgary Press Bilodeau, A. (2021). Belonging Beyond Borders: Cosmopolitan Affiliations in Contemporary Spanish American Literature. University of Calgary Press, Calgary, AB. pp. 1-267. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113029 book https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca BELONGING BEYOND BORDERS: Cosmopolitan Affiliations in Contemporary Spanish American Literature Annik Bilodeau ISBN 978-1-77385-159-4 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. It is an electronic version of a book that can be purchased in physical form through any bookseller or on-line retailer, or from our distributors. Please support this open access publication by requesting that your university purchase a print copy of this book, or by purchasing a copy yourself. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected] Cover Art: The artwork on the cover of this book is not open access and falls under traditional copyright provisions; it cannot be reproduced in any way without written permission of the artists and their agents. The cover can be displayed as a complete cover image for the purposes of publicizing this work, but the artwork cannot be extracted from the context of the cover of this specific work without breaching the artist’s copyright. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This open-access work is published under a Creative Commons licence. 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Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the wording around open access used by Australian publisher, re.press, and thank them for giving us permission to adapt their wording to our policy http://www.re-press.org 2 Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in the Global Era in the Fictions of Mario Vargas Llosa Celui qui voit dans tout être humain son semblable, qui souffre de ses peines et jouit de ses joies, celui-là doit écrire ses mémoires, lorsqu’il s’est trouvé en situation de recueillir des observations, et ces mémoires feront connaître les hommes sans acception de rangs, tels que l’époque et le pays les présentent. Anyone who sees in every human being their counterpart—suffering their pains and celebrating their joys—this person must write their memoirs once they have found themselves in a position to gather observations, and these memoirs will make others known, regardless of rank, just as they were in their time and country. —Flora Tristan, Pérégrinations d’une paria Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the most prolific Latin American authors of the past six decades, the last living member of the Boom, and one of many Latin American writers to have led a very active cosmopolitan public life. He is also a very polarized, and polarizing, intellectual. In December 2010, Vargas Llosa entered the literary pantheon when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat” (Nobel Foundation). In his acceptance speech, the Peruvian brought up the importance reading has had in his life from an early age. “La lectura convertía el sueño en vida y la vida en sueño y ponía al alcance del peda- cito de hombre que era yo el universo de la literatura” (Discurso Nobel 1) 63 (“Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams and placed the universe of literature within reach of the boy I once was”1), he recalled, and all the characters he encountered in his readings “hablaban un len- guaje universal” (4) (“spoke a universal language”). Perhaps unconscious- ly, this idea of universality never left him, and it is, to this day, one of the main features of his body of work. Although he does not state it clearly in the Nobel speech, he implies that writing serves as some sort of catharsis, a way to rectify past and current mistakes; it “embellece lo feo” (1) (“beauti- fies ugliness”). Vargas Llosa is adamant: “Seríamos peores de lo que so- mos sin los buenos libros que leímos, más conformistas, menos inquietos e insumisos y el espiritú crítico, motor del progreso, ni siquiera existiría. Igual que escribir, leer es protestar contra las insuficiencias de la vida” (2) (“We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life”).2 As a matter of fact, most of his characters—and namely, the three I study in this chapter, the fictionalized Flora Tristán and Paul Gauguin in El Paraíso en la otra esquina (2003), and Roger Casement in El sueño del celta (2010)—are strong leaders who do protest against las insuficiencias de la vida by drawing attention to new ideas in an attempt to change the world, to make it a better place for their fellow human beings.3 In the same way Vargas Llosa believes in trying to make the world a better place through literature. One of the recurring utopian visions in Vargas Llosa’s books—though less studied than the role of nationalism in his work—is precisely cosmo- politanism. Often, in his novels, much like in his non-fiction, he represents it as a counterpoint to nationalism; both are often used by Vargas Llosa’s characters as tools by which to protest against las insuficiencias de la vida. These utopian concepts are multi-faceted driving forces of humanity: after all, “lo más humano es tratar de alcanzar lo imposible” (“the most human reaction is to try to achieve the impossible”; Vargas Llosa qtd. in Camín). Vargas Llosa’s interest in cosmopolitanism has evolved according to his experiences as an engaged writer and public intellectual over several decades, from the 1950s until the present. From the cosmopolitan literary experimentation of the 1960s to his current tackling of global issues, the Peruvian’s writings reflect the evolution of Spanish American literature 64 BELONGING BEYOND BORDERS writ large; his own intellectual evolution also runs parallel to the evolution of the discourse about cosmopolitanism in Latin America. The chapter is divided into two sections: a historical and theoretical framework, followed by the literary analysis of two novels. In the first, I map Vargas Llosa’s personal and literary evolution toward cosmopol- itanism, and later in his career toward a liberal, rooted cosmopolitanism. I then focus on how his political positions became intertwined with his literature. I also discuss how his latest fictions reconceptualize both the historical and the Latin American historical novel. The second section is dedicated to the literary analysis of El Paraíso en la otra esquina and El sueño del celta, two historical novels that advocate in favour of liberal rooted cosmopolitanism, and in so doing, reflect his own political lean- ings. In the current world order of rising nationalisms, individualism, and exclusionary political projects, these two narratives focus on the role individuals play in the making of history, and they encourage readers to draw lessons from the lives of strong-minded individuals and develop em- pathy with their fellow human beings through contact with difference. As Vargas Llosa himself said, “la literatura es fuego” (“literature is fire”): it sparks the changes we ought to see in the world. A Literary Evolution Defined by Tensions Born on 28 March 1936, in Arequipa, Peru, Vargas Llosa now holds Peruvian and Spanish citizenship, and is socially and politically active in both countries. He spent his childhood between Peru and Bolivia; in 1958, he moved to Spain, only to relocate to Paris, then considered the epicentre of the world of letters, two years later. He has been crossing the Atlantic back and forth since then. In 1990, he ran for president of the Republic of Peru, losing to Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000). Even after he defeated the author, Fujimori became one of the most vocal opponents of his writings and intellectualism, equally criticizing his supposed lack of Peruvianness and his liberalism.
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