Miguel Angel Asturias, ”The President”. Reality, fiction, power and myth
Miguel Ángel Asturias was one of the first Latin American writers so interested in evaluating within his creation the implications of tyranny and dictatorship. Of course, he has some famous forerunners in this field, such as Romulo Gallegos or Ramón del Valle-Inclán. But they remained mostly at the surface of this specific phenomenon, whereas Asturias goes deeper and always searches for more profound meaning. His novel El Senor Presidente (1946) uses some narrative techniques related to those imposed by the Surrealist movement, because this author was closely connected to the great representatives of Surrealism, spending in Paris some years of his youth. Besides, the fictional reality of the book maintains a permanent relationship with the historic reality of Guatemala. Therefore the mythic characteristics of the protagonist have to be discussed taking into consideration the evolution of Asturias’s native land, always torn between its aspirations to democracy and the dangers of tyranny as it was.
Keywords: Latin American novel, dictator, tyranny, fictional reality, historic development
1. Fernando Alegría, Nueva historia de la novela hispanoamericana, Hanover, NH, Ediciones del Norte, 1986, p. 223.
2. Luis Harss, Los nuestros, Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, 1966, p. 101.
3. Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1981, p. 18.
4. Toate citatele de pe parcursul acestui text sunt preluate din vol. Miguel Ángel Asturias, Domnul Preşedinte. Traducere, prefaţă și tabel cronologic de Paul Alexandru Georgescu, București, Editura pentru Literatură, 1964.
5. Giuseppe Bellini, Narrativa de Miguel Ángel Asturias, Buenos Aires, Losada, 1969, p. 57.
6. Ricardo Gutiérrez-Mouat, El espacio de la crítica, Madrid, Origenes, 1989, p. 45.
7. Richard Callan, Miguel Ángel Asturias, New York, Twayne, 1970, p. 13.
8. Ibid., p. 15.
9. Arturo Uslar Pietri, Cuarenta ensayos, Caracas, Monte Ávila, 1990, p. 121.
10. Günter W. Lorenz, „Entrevista con Asturias”, în Mundo Nuevo, 43 (1970), p. 40.
11. Ibid., p. 41.
12. Miguel Ángel Asturias, „El Señor Presidente como mito” (Apendice), în Edición crítica de las obras completas. Vol. IV, Paris & Mexico, Klincksieck – Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1981.
13. Carlos Ferrer Plaza, „Miguel Ángel Asturias y Alejo Carpentier: la evolución literaria del dictador hispanoamericano”, în Glauks, v.7, n. 2 (2007), p. 126.
14. Ibid., p. 128.
