Juan Rulfo : the pioneer of magical realism in Latin America What is magical realism? Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a genre of narrative fiction and, more broadly, art (literature, painting, film, theatre, etc.) that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements. It is sometimes called fabulism, in reference to the conventions of fables, myths, and allegory. "Magical realism", perhaps the most common term, often refers to fiction and literature in particular, with magic or the supernatural presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting. Matthew Strecher defines magic realism as "what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe". Many writers are categorized as "magical realists", which confuses the term and its wide definition. Magical realism is often associated with Latin American literature, particularly authors including genre founders Miguel Angel Asturias, Jorge Luis Borges, Elena Garro, Juan Rulfo, Rómulo Gallegos, Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. In English literature, its chief exponents include Salman Rushdie, Alice Hoffman, and Nick Joaquin. Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, best known as Juan Rulfo (16 May 1917 – 7 January 1986) Rulfo was born in 1917 in Apulco, Jalisco After his father was killed in 1923 and his mother died in 1927, Rulfo's grandmother raised him in Guadalajara Jalisco. Their extended family consisted of landowners whose fortunes were ruined by the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War of 1926–1928, a Roman Catholic integralist revolt against the government of Mexico following the Mexican Revolution Rulfo was sent to study in the Luis Silva School at Guadalajara, where he lived from 1928 to 1932. He completed six years of elementary school and a special seventh year from which he graduated as a bookkeeper, though he never practiced that profession. Rulfo attended a seminary (analogous to a secondary school) from 1932 to 1934, but did not attend a university afterwards, as the University of Guadalajara was closed due to a strike and because Rulfo had not taken preparatory school courses. Rulfo moved to Mexico City, where he entered the National Military Academy, which he left after three months. He then hoped to study law at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In 1936, Rulfo was able to audit courses in literature at the University, because he obtained a job as an immigration file clerk through his uncle Later, he was able to advance in his career and travel throughout Mexico as an immigration agent. In 1946, he Joint a company, Goodrich Euzkadi, as a wholesale traveling sales agent. This obligated him to travel throughout all of southern Mexico, until he was fired in 1952. Rulfo obtained a fellowship at the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. There, between 1952 and 1954, he was able to write two books. The first book was a collection of harshly realistic short stories, El Llano en llamas (1953). The stories centered on life in rural Mexico around the time of the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War. The second book was Pedro Páramo (1955), a short novel about a man named Juan Preciado who travels to his recently deceased mother's hometown, Comala, to find his father, only to come across a literal ghost town ─ populated, that is, by spectral figures. Initially, the novel met with cool critical reception and sold only two thousand copies during the first four years; later, however, the book became highly acclaimed. Páramo was a key influence for Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez. Pedro Páramo has been translated into more than 30 languages, and the English version has sold more than a million copies in the United States Gabriel García Márquez has said that he felt blocked as a novelist after writing his first four books and that it was only his life-changing discovery of Pedro Páramo in 1961 that opened the way to the composition of his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He noted that all of Rulfo's published writing, put together, "add up to no more than 300 pages; but that is almost as many and I believe they are as durable, as the pages that have come down to us from Sophocles“ Jorge Luis Borges considered Pedro Páramo to be one of the greatest texts written in any language. During the 1940s and 50s, Mexican writer Juan Rulfo explored the root and character of Mexican identity by turning his attention, and his camera, to rural Mexico. His photographs captured the austerity, solitude and resilience of the landscape and people. “Rulfo’s photography does not idealize rural life in Mexico, but quietly observes and critiques the forces that have shaped that way of life,” says BYU Museum of Art Curator of Photography Diana Turnbow. “The integrity and poignancy of his images equitably places Rulfo amongst the distinguished photographers of Mexico.” To a large extent, Rulfo’s literary success eclipsed his significant work in photography, film, and indigenous studies. Rulfo, himself chose not to exhibit his photographs until late in life. Yet the opening of his archive revealed a rich and extensive visual record of rural and urban Mexico at a formative period in the 20th century. The novel is set in the town of Comala in the Mexican state of Colima. The story begins with the first person account of Juan Preciado, who promises his mother at her death bed that he will return to Comala to meet his father, Pedro Páramo. The narration is interspersed with fragments of dialogue from the life of his father, who lived in a time when Comala was a robust, living town, instead of the ghost town it has become. Juan encounters one person after another in Comala, each of whom he perceives to be dead. Midway through the novel, Preciado dies. From this point on most of the stories happen in the time of Pedro Páramo. The two major competing narrative voices present alternative visions of Comala, one living and one full of the spirits of the dead. I came to Comala because I was told that my father, a man called Pedro Paramo, was living there. It was what my mother had told me, and I promised I would go and see him after she died. I assured her I would do that. She was near death, and I would have promised her anything. “Don’t fail to go and see him,” she told me. “That’s what his name is, although they sometimes called him something else. I am sure he would want to know you.” The only thing I could do was to tell her I would do it and, after saying it so often, it became such a habit that I continued repeating it, even after I managed to remove my hands from her lifeless hands. Before she died she also told me: “When you go, don’t ask him for anything. Demand that he give you what is ours. What he should have given me and never did… Make him pay dearly, my son, for the way he has neglected us.” “Yes, I’ll do that, mother.” I never really intended to fulfill my promise. But now I have started to dream about it and be filled with illusions. After that a new world began to take shape, based on the hope of a man called Pedro Paramo, the husband of my mother. And that’s why I came to Comala. Structure (1) No chapters but fragments (69 in total) The different stories are intertwined in the course of the novel with constant chronological leaps Two parts could be distinguished: Levels A and B In level A Juan Preciado is the main storyteller (in reality it is a dialog with Dorotea) whereas in the level B there is mostly a third narrator (stories set in the time of Pedro Paramo) Level A: Juan Preciado tells his own story, its linear travel by Comala In fragments 36 and 38, Juan Preciado ends his narration and Dorotea tells about herself Both characters perceive from their tomb the existence of other buried people, and are witness of their monologues Structure (2) Level B: the narrated story is divided discontinuously in different units Unit a: Childhood and adolescence of Pedro Paramo Unit b: Murder of Toribio Aldreate (narrated by Fulgor Sedano) and some previous episodes close in time Unit c: fragments about Miguel Paramo and Padre Renteria Unit d: Susana San Juan Unit e: deaths of Susana and Pedro Difficult to read? Not so much! - A simple argument - A limited number of characters - There is, almost always, a successive temporality … but a second lecture is strongly recommended !! Juan Preciado tells how, to fulfill the promise made to his dying mother, he travels to Comala to settle accounts with his father, Pedro Paramo, whom he has never met. Juan discovers that Comala is an uninhabited town full of ghosts. When he realizes he is in the middle of the dead, terror seizes him and he dies surrounded by the whispers of the souls in pain that populate Comala. Juan Preciado is a man without history Pedro Paramo is the center of all those stories that recreate Comala's past. Lost in a past time remains the story of the bloodthirsty cacique, his boundless love for Susana San Juan, his despair when she dies, his ultimate revenge on Comala. His only love, from a very young age, is that of Susana San Juan, a childhood friend who leaves Comala with her father at a young age.