{"id":1369435,"date":"2025-01-30T16:32:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T15:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/?post_type=articles&p=1369435"},"modified":"2025-01-30T17:31:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T16:31:53","slug":"spains-four-great-poets-are-three","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/spains-four-great-poets-are-three\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain’s Four Great Poets Are Three"},"featured_media":1369436,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[],"areas":[748],"subjects":[421],"class_list":["post-1369435","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","areas-literature","subjects-humanities"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-leadin":["With \"national\" literary canons come questions around identity, inclusion, and the boundaries of cultural heritage. Andr\u00e9s Porras Chaves says it may be time to shift focus onto the literature that is produced and read in a country, rather than the author's citizenship."],"wpcf-article-body":["This article\u2019s title is, of course, a provocation and not entirely original. In the preface to his avant-garde<\/em> masterpiece Altazor<\/em> (1931), Vicente Huidobro famously wrote that \u201cThe four cardinal points are three: South and North.\u201d Later, self-proclaimed anti-poet Nicanor Parra transformed the line into, arguably, the most memorable reflection on Chilean literature ever written: \u201cChile\u2019s four great poets \/ are three: \/ Alonso de Ercilla and Rub\u00e9n Dar\u00edo.\u201d\r\n\r\nParra\u2019s version is brilliant thanks to its intertextual playfulness, as he respects the earlier structure and irrationality while changing the theme towards a questioning of literary canons and Chile\u2019s so-called Great Four \u2014 a list typically featuring Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha, and Huidobro himself.\r\n\r\nBut the true stroke of genius lies in the third verse, as neither Ercilla nor Dar\u00edo were Chilean. Alonso de Ercilla (1533-1594) was a Spanish soldier who fought in the colonial war against the indigenous Mapuche people, which inspired his epic poem La Araucana<\/em>. Rub\u00e9n Dar\u00edo (1867-1916) was born in Nicaragua and lived in numerous Latin American countries during his life.\r\n\r\nThere is a powerful underlying argument. Ercilla\u2019s text has long been considered the starting point of Chile\u2019s literary history, and his admiration-filled descriptions of Mapuche leaders Caupolic\u00e1n, Lautaro, and Colocolo were instrumental in the construction of its national identity. Dar\u00edo only spent a few years in the country, but he went on to become the most important figure of modernismo<\/em>, a key literary movement throughout the Spanish-speaking world and beyond<\/a>.\r\n\r\nIn just three verses, Nicanor Parra effectively destabilized the very notion of national literature, and his poem continues to pose relevant questions to this day.\r\n
Not so long from now, nobody will wonder who the four great poets of Chile, or Spain, are.<\/blockquote>\r\nThe idea that each nation has its own literature remains widespread, reinforced by school curricula around the globe. Decade after decade, students in Spain have had to memorize comprehensive lists of significant Spanish authors and their works \u2014oftentimes, without even reading them \u2014 under the assumption that a part of their identity somehow rests there. The experience probably resonates with readers who grew up in diverse parts of the world.\r\n\r\nThis ingenious form of pedagogical torture can be traced all the way back to German philosopher Herder and his notion of the Volksgeist<\/em>, used by nineteenth-century Romantics to argue that literature was the expression of a nation. What followed was the creation of literary canons, that is, lists of authors considered the best of their respective countries of origin. In the process, some writers were canonized for posterity; others, entirely forgotten. At times, the criteria had more to do with biographical factors than artistic production. Nationalistic discourses favored homogeneity: authors of foreign origin or belonging to ethnic minorities were often excluded, while female writers were generally ignored.\r\n\r\nShakespeare and England, Cervantes and Spain, Goethe and Germany, Dante and Italy\u2026 The list goes on and on. When one thinks of American literature, the first names that come to mind are probably the likes of Poe, Whitman, Twain, Faulkner, which paints a rather limited picture of US society and its alleged national spirit. A more representative list would include, for example, Gloria Anzald\u00faa, whose Borderlands\/La Frontera: The New Mestiza <\/em>(1987) remains one of the most unique and fascinating books ever written in the United States. But would Anzald\u00faa want to see herself in such company? It seems doubtful, as she identified as Chicana and mestiza<\/em>, whereas her literature intermixes English, Spanish, and Nahuatl in a conscious effort to dismantle the US-Mexico national divide.\r\n\r\nSpain presents similar dilemmas. I discovered Parra\u2019s poem reading a speech<\/a> by Roberto Bola\u00f1o, who was born in Chile but spent his youth in Mexico and half of his life in Catalonia. To which country should he be ascribed, especially considering how he characterized literature and exile as \u201ctwo sides of the same coin,\u201d and nationalism as \u201cdreadful\u201d?\r\n\r\nThis question continues to haunt us with ever greater intensity. The writers behind some of the most acclaimed and best-selling works in Spain in recent years were born elsewhere. Gabriela Wiener \u2014 author of Undiscovered<\/em><\/a> (2021) \u2014 is from Lima but lives in Madrid, a city that Ecuadorian-born writers Mar\u00eda Fernanda Ampuero \u2014Cockfight<\/em><\/a> (2018) \u2014 and M\u00f3nica Ojeda \u2014 Jawbone<\/em><\/a> (2018) \u2014 call home too, as does poet and activist Yeison F. Garc\u00eda L\u00f3pez, from Cali, who identifies as Afro-Colombian-Spanish<\/a>. Born and raised in Mexico, Juan Pablo Villalobos \u2014 Down the Rabbit Hole<\/em><\/a> (2010) \u2014 has resided in Barcelona for over two decades. Peruvian Boom <\/em>novelist Mario Vargas Llosa obtained Spanish citizenship in the early nineties.\r\n\r\nThe Latin American case is paradigmatic: currently, over one million Madrid residents<\/a> were born there. However, other nationalities have a significant presence in the Iberian Peninsula as well. Award-winning Moroccan authors Najat El Hachmi \u2014The Last Patriarch<\/em><\/a> (2010) \u2014 and Mohamed El Morabet migrated to Spain at a very young age and have adopted Catalan and Spanish respectively as their writing languages, instead of their native Amazigh. Some of the most important writers of Equatorial Guinea have been exiled in the former metropole since decades ago, including Juan Tom\u00e1s \u00c1vila Laurel \u2014By Night, the Mount Burns<\/em><\/a> (2009) \u2014 and Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, author of the classic Shadows of Your Black Memory<\/em><\/a> (1987). Hyperpop artist and writer Chenta Tsai Tseng was born in Taiwan<\/a>.\r\n\r\nMany of them would refuse, with good reason, to be labeled as \u201cSpanish authors.\u201d But their literary impact here is undeniable on multiple levels, including the contemporary surge of autofiction and long-overdue debates regarding decolonization. Will such authors be eventually remembered or forgotten? How many will be canonized in future textbooks?\r\n\r\nIt may be time to abandon traditional notions of \u201cSpanish literature\u201d altogether and start talking about \u201cliterature in Spain\u201d instead. This shift would entail a different focus, one that looks at the texts produced, distributed, and read in this part of the world, regardless of their author\u2019s citizenship or even language (by the way, let us not forget the role of literary translators<\/a> in all this). Publishers and readers already seem unconcerned with such artificial divisions, whereas institutions are taking steps<\/a> in similar directions.\r\n\r\nI have resisted the temptation to conclude with a new version of Nicanor Parra\u2019s anti-poem, as it would be a vain effort. Not so long from now, nobody will wonder who the four great poets of Chile, or Spain, are.\r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights.\r\n\r\n "],"wpcf-audio-article":["https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Spains-Four-Great-Poets-Are-Three.mp3"],"wpcf-article-extract":[""]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/1369435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1369436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=1369435"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=1369435"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=1369435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}