Travelers and
Littérateurs at the Banks of the
Intertextual
Fluxion and the Desire for Universality
(in Texts by Ephraim G. Squier, Mark Twain, José
Coronel Urtecho and Gioconda Belli)
Oh,
happy land, Mahoma's paradise! |
Nicaragua,
grand, divine the plan, |
To
link two oceans with a ship canal; |
Grand,
immortal will be thy future fate, |
Thy
name well known to every state. |
[...] |
The
British flunkies may rave and sputter |
About
Kinney, Walker--”filibuster”-- |
But
Yankee pluck and Yankee enterprise |
Will
soon possess Mahoma's paradise” |
(Patrick Cudmore 1892,
cited in Brannstrom 61) |
There exists a
river in Nicaragua where all the stories meet: The San Juan River,
roughly 200 kilometers long, part of the border with Costa Rica, once
at the center of colonial power struggles in the Caribbean, passage to
the Californian gold fields, national, history-laden symbol in
Nicaragua and one of the remotest and least populated areas of the
country; the place where the 'geographic destiny' (IHNCA 5) of the
nation – an interoceanic canal – was supposed to come true but never
did. The great national desire for universality is, in a way, buried
here.
This space
primarily came into being through literary texts. There are huge
amounts of texts that have imagined, described and thus created this
space: The first known texts about the river stem from the
conquistadors, but the 'boom' of literature about the San Juan River
took place in the 19th century: European and U.S.-American
diplomats, engineers, scientists, littérateurs and adventurers traveled
along the river for transit purposes or for canal surveys and wrote
about it. These
texts triggered a powerful narrative which was taken up by the
Nicaraguan elites: These strips of land were chosen to be the route for
the world trade; an interoceanic canal would boost world trade and
bring progress, civilization and prosperity to
Against all
hopes, the
One of the first
texts to break the silence is Rápido tránsito. Al
ritmo de Norte América ([1953]
1959), autobiographical essays/travelogues by José Coronel Urtecho,
leader of the Vanguardia movement and a very important figure in the
literary scene in
Now, the purpose
of this article is to show how Coronel's and Belli's texts, in their
intertextual interaction with Squier's and Twain's, not only revise the
powerful narrative of the canal (as one of progress) but moreover
re-signify the space of the river for the nation by depicting and
construing it as a literary space. In a final step I shall then discuss
how this constitution aims at the Nicaraguan desire for universality.
A Narrative of
Progress Revised
The hybrid text Rápido
tránsito deals with the strange
Somewhat
surprising, the first chapter “Viajeros en el río” – the one about the
Defending his
“soledad casi sagrada” (3), which he found at the San Juan River, the
narrator starts an ambivalent dialog with Squier's text and shows a
skeptical attitude towards the canal. While Squier had concluded his
first chapter about San Juan del
Norte with the
following remark:
The habits of
the natives were unchanged in the space of three hundred years; [...]
They little thought that the party of strangers, gliding silently
before them, were there to prepare the way for the clanging steamer,
and that the great world without was meditating the titanic enterprise
of laying open their primeval solitude, grading down their hills, and
opening from one great ocean to the other, a gigantic canal. upon which the navies of the world might pass,
laden with the treasures of two hemispheres! (Squier
70).
Coronel now
finishes his first chapter with the following thoughts, which can be
read as an answer to Squier:
La soledad es
cada vez mayor y más bella en el río. Tal vez el río se pueble un día,
como pensaba Squier; naveguen barcos y gasolinas; pasten caballos y
ganados de raza en sus llanos y en los gramales de las lomas; se miren
en sus orillas hermosas casas tropicales y en muchas de ellas libros
americanos y retratos de poetas. Tal vez la soledad y la belleza
primitiva queden sólo en los libros. Tal vez la selva
vuelva a cubrirlo todo. Todo depende (Coronel 24).
Maintaining
still a certain ambivalence here, one can
encounter more and more explicit critiques of a certain
economic-technical form of progress throughout the book: the shock
about the industrialized
Coronel pulled
away from politics and in some way took refuge at his wife's finca by
the
The critique of
progress becomes even more evident in Waslala, which does not
only reincorporate Coronel's ambivalent answer to Squier into the novel
but also takes an even more negative stand on the issue of the canal.
The novel takes
place in the future, where there is still no interoceanic canal, but
only one from the Pacific to the
The critique of
progress is also voiced through the two U.S.-American figures of the
novel, the journalist Raphael and the scientist Morris, both of whom
enter into a crisis in the light of the heavy contrasts between 'their
world' and the one of Faguas: Their only function in the novel is to
name and recognize the non-fulfillment and/or the negative consequences
of progress in Faguas.
The novel also
formulates a critique of progress on yet another level: While Coronel
reinforces his anti-progress-argument through direct reference to the
transcendentalist Thoreau, Belli draws upon genres related to
romanticism and plays with the science fiction genre to state her
point. Belli uses elements of science fiction without pulling through
with it (Mackenbach “Unbewohnte Utopie” 500). From my perspective, she
does so to insinuate that science fiction is an
impossibility in a country like
It seems that, in the
“postmodern hell” (Mackenbach “Unbewohnte Utopie” 499) depicted in the
novel, the fairytale is the only possible structuring element and
possible bridge to the international solidarity movement (5).
Thus, the references to genres in Waslala
not only serve as a critique of progress and the development paradigm,
but open up a broader context. The idea that the nation can fulfill its
'destiny' only through the construction of the canal is denied just as
it is in Rápido tránsito.
Rather, both
authors make use of different literary strategies to write against the
narrative of the canal and try to suggest other readings and writings
of the
The
As already
mentioned, it is greatly due to travelogues that the (inter)national
narrative around the canal came into being. However, travelers not only
construed the
I employ the term 'literary space' in order
to
conceptualize a very interesting dynamic: namely, that in these texts
the
periphery and marginalized
This
dynamic occurs on various levels: the
literature construes and depicts the San Juan River as a space which is
created by literature and which generates literature, a place where
literature happens and meets intertextually, and as a hoard of
literature, as to say a place where literature belongs, or as Leonel
Delgado puts it,”el río como
espacio fundado por la escritura y a la vez productor de escritura
inagotable” (Interview, March 2008).
The Enchantment of the Tropics: Coronel's Dialogs with Traveling
Littérateurs
In the first
chapter of Rápido tránsito, “Viajeros en el río“, Squier and
Twain have a prominent role: Coronel lets them speak about the beauty
of the
[S]u admiración
[Squier's] era la selva tropical y el vasto río, por la invariable
majestad de su carácter (majestic character). No se cansaba
nunca de contemplar la densa masa de follaje que literalmente, según
aseguraba, cubría el río y que en la luz oblicua producía efectos
mágicos de sombra sobre el agua [...] soñaba con ver un día la tierra
cultivada, [...]; pero un siglo después de su viaje el río sigue tan
bello y despoblado como entonces (7, italics in the original). (6)
Whereas the
“según aseguraba” mainly insinuates the process of translation, there
are other moments
when the narrator comments on certain statements of Squier and even
doubts them. Squier, an arduous promoter of the manifest destiny of
the
Since Squier
himself is quite associated with the canal idea, Coronel introduces
another traveler, who does not even mention the canal in his texts and
who is a world famous writer: Mark Twain. Twain got to know the country
in transit while traveling from San Francisco to New York – experiences
he jotted down in his travel diary and published in an enhanced and
revised version in the newspaper Alta California (8).
Although the
narrator writes that one would hardly dare to change Twain's notes
(Coronel 10), he sure does so and hence depoliticizes the travel notes.
Mark Twain wrote in a poetic-humorous way about the arrival at San Juan
del Sur (on the Pacific coast) and the journey to the lake:
Left San Juan [del Sur] in carriages – native drivers armed with
long knives – native soldiers barefooted, with muskets. Threatened war
between 2 candidates for Presidency of Republic of Nicaragua – case of
a contested election – present president to hold his polish and whip
both parties. Long procession of horsemen and
hacks – beautiful road and cool, rainy atmosphere. All on lookout for wild monkeys.
Coronel now
translates parts of this description, leaving out the remarks on the
impending civil war in
Los cocheros
nativos iban armados de machetes. Los soldados nativos descalzos, con
mosquetas. Procesión de jinetes y jamelgos. Bello camino, y la
atmósfera fresca, lloviznosa. Naranjas. Bananos. Aguardiente. Café. Tortillas calientes. Jícaras labradas. Bonitas
mujeres nativas. Vuelos alrededor
Politics,
violence or
anything negative is not translated; nothing shall destroy the
enchanted idyll,
which is especially emphasized in Twain's descriptions of the trip
along the
river. The narrator notes surprised that Twain, who had been a
steamboat pilot,
does not take much notice of the rapids at El Castillo, but he finds
the
explanation in him being stunned by the nature: “El mismo paraíso, en
realidad.
El
dominio imperial de la belleza. Era evidente que Mark Twain estaba
entusiasmado, ebrio de formas y colores” (12). Coronel's
translation of Twain's text stresses
primarily the enchanting atmosphere: “Eran
aquellas las señales
However, Coronel also points to some
ironic undertones
in Mark Twain's notes (at least those which are not related to
writer Coronel likes this ironic disruption. Likewise, his whole
book Rápido
tránsito is itself pervaded by fine irony: Grandiloquent thoughts
about the
function of literature are broken with descriptions of day-to-day
encounters
and portraits, dashed with an ironic tone of the narrator towards
himself. There
is a constant intent of undercutting; landscapes are created
linguistically and
disintegrated right away; thoughts are built up argumentatively only to
end up
in a sudden shift or to ebb away in a gesture of doubt.
Hence Coronel,
after having talked about one representative of world literature, comes
to speak of Míster Kennedy: one of the few US-Americans who actually
settled at the San Juan River and who is “una especie de diario hablado
con todas las pequeñas noticias personales
Another
(nameless) traveler wakens the interest of the narrator because he
happens to notice two special books in his hut: selected works of
Thoreau and a biography about the transcendentalist, two texts which,
according to the narrator, belong here: “dos libros en perfecta armonía
con el paraje” (17). The last traveler, the young biology student
Douglas, brings with him not only his fascination for the fauna of the
area, but also long conversations about
From Positivism to Magic and the River as a Memory Space
Waslala also works with
the gaze of the traveler to revalue the space of the
La multitud de
pájaros de brillante plumaje que se lanzaban sorpresivamente de las
altas ramas, cual flores que se echaron a volar, provocaba las
exclamaciones de Raphael, quien [...] no cesaba de asombrarse ante la
belleza de aquel paraje que envuelto en la luz rojiza del sol poniente,
era la visión más poética que él jamás recordara haber tenido en su
retina (Belli 90).
This passage
paraphrases the already cited paragraph by Squier (see endnote 6) and Coronel’s translation of it, only that now
it is Raphael who never wearies to look at the all-surrounding beauty
and that Belli’s description is even more saturated with kitsch than
Squier’s.
Even more
interesting is the fact that Belli not only incorporates Squier’s text
into Waslala, but also reinterprets it. Belli uses
Squier’s text to depict the
These “fantastic
freaks” now become part of the magic of the river in Waslala:
In the future, Pedro is back with his conch, that had annoyed Squier so
much – “Pedro blew another nerve-cracking blast on his conch - that
awful conch“ (Squier 122) – and his crew prays and chants. Squier had
also briefly mentioned that at some point the
This becomes
even more evident in the depiction of the so called Remolino Grande,
about which Squier wrote the following: “This name is given to a
whirlpool caused by the abrupt turning of the stream, which is here
somewhat confined by its unyielding banks” (103). This swirl becomes a
magical one in Waslala, seemingly encompassing the sirens of
the Ulysses, El Aleph and the myths around the
sinking of the Titanic:
[E]l negro
tornasol, todos los colores por efímeros instantes, dissolviéndose en
arcoiris sucesivos; [...] Vio cofres y barcos y sillas, puentes de
mando de barcos fantasmas con sus capitanes en la pose digna con que se
hundirían sin hacer alarde, ni quejarse; vio una orquesta entera
inmóvil [...] vio mapas de regiones perdidas [...]; vio miles de
relojes de arena hacerse y deshacerse en círculos infinitos y contempló
finalmente el iris quieto del agua en el centro, hermoso como laguna de
fin del mundo (Belli 109).
The
Even though
Belli reinterprets Squier's experiences, the question remains whether
in this way she subversively undercuts the gaze of the other or if she
thus rather fortifies the exoticizing gaze. In Waslala the
literary space
Through the
incorporation and reinterpretation of these texts the river space is
first of all construed as a (magical) idyllic nature spot and through
the reinterpretation of the texts the gaze of the other is
appropriated. Coronel and Belli also draw upon oral elements and thus
fix and locate the (for
Coronel as hombre letrado amidst 'the Jungle'
In this section, I want to
demonstrate how both authors further construe the
Rápido tránsito is always read
autobiographically by literary scholars, which seems surprising because
the paratextual references are conflicting at least. Furthermore, an
autobiographical pact in the sense of Philippe Lejeune (1989) is only
possible at two moments in the whole book and – interestingly enough –
there the name always appears distorted due to processes of
translation: At one point the narrator recounts that a U.S.-American
girl names a wallet in form of a dog after his name: “le puso al
perrito mi nombre, que pronunciaba Oséy.” (Coronel 47, italics
in the original); he similarly reproduces the distorted pronunciation
when he talks about how Ernesto Cardenal and himself are presented as
“míster Cardinal y míster Cornell” (131) in the
However, as
Leonel Delgado details, the text is shaped by another characteristic of
autobiographical texts: the one of confession and apology for deeds
which one committed – in this regard Coronel “confesses” indirectly,
talking about Ezra Pound to excuse his own proximity to fascist ideas
in his youth and using Henry David Thoreau to defend his own retreat
into solitude/nature (Delgado 218-225).
Still, I think –
even taking into consideration the autobiographical dimension of essays
in
The second
marker is the reference to
Si alguna parte
tuve yo mismo en orientar en un sentido a ciertos poetas jóvenes de
nuestro país, fue solamente en darles a conocer, hace veinte años, la
poesía norteamericana propiamente moderna que iniciara Ezra Pound y que
tenía nombres tan raros, nuevos y poco familiares, como T.S. Eliot,
Marianne Moore, E.E. Cummings o William Carlos Williams. (Coronel 156).
Thus, although perhaps only
for those familiar with Nicaraguan literary life, an autobiographical
reading is definitely possible.
Rápido tránsito deals with so
many different literary texts that the narrator is primarily perceived
as very erudite and as a literary critic. The self-construction as hombre
letrado happens initially in the first chapter “
Viajeros en el río”, where the image of the “estante de libros
norteamericanos” (Coronel 8, 22), which the narrator harbors in his
home at the
According to the
narrator, the bookshelf irritates travelers who do not expect such a
thing amidst “the jungle”. This is exemplified through the episode with
the biology student Douglas:
[D]isimuló su
extrañeza, pero le vi en los ojos que le sorprendía tanto como
encontrarse un caimán en Beacon Street [...]. Nunca pensé – decía, como
hablando consigo mismo – encontrar aquí, en la orilla de la jungla – the
jungle era su palabra –un libro de Elliot o de ningún otro escritor
americano (Coronel 22f, italics in the original).
The literature
at the San Juan means something exotic and unexpected to Douglas, and
the hombre letrado plays coquettishly with his own exotic
status by the river, whereby he seems to squint with one eye at the USA
and with the other towards Nicaragua: 'Look, civilization also exists
in the alleged jungle'.
The view of the
Muy pocos
norteamericanos de los que pasan por el río he podido tratar, porque
generalmente son reservados con los nativos y van de prisa, envueltos
en su propia esquivez, sintiéndose aventureros solitarios en la jungla,
donde no hay teóricamente hombres civilizados, y pensando nada más en
lo que llevarán o contarán cuando regresen a la civilización, a su
país, cuando vuelvan a América (Coronel 16).
At this point,
the question remains, if in this way the narrator depicts all the other
river inhabitants as uncivilized people. Leonel Delgado comments about
this paragraph: “Aquí el concepto
de civilización es invocado [...] en razón de la deducción más
evidente—esto es, subrayar que Coronel es un
civilizado entre nativos”; however, Delgado also writes that this
reference is meant ironically, since the
With this
It is precisely
because this alleged U.S. civilization sometimes turns out to be not so
civilized: Coronel narrates an episode with a U.S. politician who is
quite astonished about his poster of Walt Whitman, explaining that
Whitman was not
that popular in the U.S. and that he himself considers him boring and
monotonous and that people in the U.S. would prefer Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow's Hiawatha (Coronel 8f). Coronel does not comment on
this in this chapter, but in the last chapter he talks about Hiawatha
in such a depreciatory manner as he did not about any other text in the
whole book: “el poema es
ingenuo, infantil, sin relación viviente con el tema“(203).
Civilization lies in the eyes of the beholder, but no reader will have
failed to notice the permanent self-construction of Coronel as hombre
letrado in Rápido tránsito.
Through this construction
Coronel does not only bring the literature,
which materializes in his person, to the
He seemingly
succeeded in doing so. For example, the Nicaraguan poet Luis Rocha said
in his opening speech of a poet reunion in homage to José Coronel
Urtecho, which took place in San José in 2001: “Para mí el Río San Juan
corre, vital y literariamente, en Jośe Coronel Urtecho. Si
pensaba en uno necesariamente pensaba en el otro, hasta que se hicieron
uno sólo“ (9). In
Whatsoever, this
particular perception of the space has not only been continued in
speeches at poetry festivals but also within novels such as Waslala
by Gioconda Belli, who through the figure of Don José continues the
construction of José Coronel as hombre letrado and poet: “[E]n
el río [Don José] leía, escribía poesía, honraba a los clásicos. Hasta tenía un
retrato de Whitman en su estudio, y predicaba el amor a la belleza, al
arte, a la filosofía” (Belli 19). Not only does
she take up certain elements of Coronel's self-construction as hombre
letrado like the poster of Walt Whitman and cites and paraphrases
parts of his texts (see Belli 14, 17, 22, 86f), but she also tries to
include the mental crisis that Coronel had in the 1950s by letting him
recount how he spoke with literary figures:
Pensadores,
escritores, personajes de la literatura me han acompañado tan
sólidamente como si estuvieran a mi lado en carne y hueso. [...] Sufrí
de alucinaciones en las que hablaba con Mrs. Dolloway y Mrs. Ramsey.
Pasaba noches conversando con Cervantes y Borges sobre la posibilidad
de que alguien reescribiera el Quijote sin jamás haberlo leído.
(Belli 60).
The interesting
thing here is not so much the reference to his nervous breakdown, but
rather that through this the San Juan is even more filled with
literature, stories, literary figures and writers, with García
Márquez's landscapes and with Heathcliff and Cathy from Wuthering
Heights (61).
In the section
“Citas y reconocimientos” at the end of the book, it is explicitly said
that certain parts of the novel are taken from Rápido tránsito
and from Coronel's poem “Pequeña biografía de mi mujer” (Belli 383).
Thus not only do the intertextual references show a great deal of
self-reflexivity and comunicativity, but Belli also acquaints a greater
German speaking audience with these two texts by Coronel – which
according to my research have never been translated into any other
language (11). This way, Coronel's figure
roams and circulates; the San Juan River is a literary space because a
poet lived and wrote there - with this novel this idea is transported
beyond the borders of
Werner
Mackenbach criticizes that Belli draws a too harmonious and
non-critical image of Coronel and that she shields the political
contradictions of his life (“Unbewohnte Utopie” 179, footnote 46). This
is a quite valid objection because Coronel's radical political shifts
are in no way treated through the figure of Don José. He is merely
wrapped into a deep nostalgia because he cannot find his way back to
Waslala, the utopian place which he once founded with other poets. Just
a slight critique shines through, when
Melisandra ponders that the retirement to a river cannot be the only
solution: “En el río al menos se podía conservar el orgullo. Hacerse
la ilusión de un mundo donde cualquier atardecer podía justificar la
existencia; [...]. Pero no podía ser esa la única existencia posible.
No podía aceptar que el único recurso de la felicidad fuese la
reclusión ».(Belli 255)
Maybe this is
also the reason why Waslala is not located near the
The Desire for
Universality and the Meaning of Literature in
In both texts,
the San Juan River is re-signified and depicted as a literary space
following two strategies: on the one hand through intertextual
references to travel literature from the 19th century and
through the appropriation of the gaze of the other; on the other hand,
through the construction of José Coronel Urtecho as hombre letrado.
Now one could
ask: What is so special about the
Pursuant to my
reading, this constitution tries to show that part of the narrative on
the canal was actually fulfilled, namely the one about
También se
podría ver, dado el contenido histórico
In her novel,
Belli points not only to the travelers of the 19th century
but also to the international solidarity movement with Nicaragua in the
1980s by letting a group of U.S.-Americans, Germans, Argentinians and
Dutch travel on the river (Dröscher 162). All of whom turn out to be
important figures for Melisandra in order to find the utopian place.
The function of
the constitution as literary space goes even deeper, though. In his
article “Introducción al tema de la universalidad nicaragüense” (1966),
Coronel tries to trace back the Nicaraguan desire for universality. He
suggests that this desire originates in the exceptional geographical
position of
[L]a poesía es
hasta ahora el único producto nicaragüense de valor universal [...] y
que si alguna admiración despierta Nicaragua fuera de sus fronteras, no
lo debe a otra cosa. Es solamente en la poesía donde hasta aquí hemos
alcanzado nuestra propia universalidad (Coronel “Introducción a la
universalidad nicaragüense” 7).
As such, the
constitution as literary space implies a revaluation of the peripheral
region for the nation, in which the literature has such a high
standing. Thus, the space is newly appropriated for the nation –
through literature and not through the traumatic narrative on the canal.
A similar idea
of universality through literature appears in Waslala, e.g.
when a minor character suggests about Don José: “Sus prosas, sus
poemas, los engrandecían a todos, demostraban que, aun en su miseria,
Faguas albergaba belleza, grandes pensamientos” (Belli 249).
And the
literature has still another meaning: The (U.S.) paradigm of progress
is contrasted with that of civilization. According to Coronel,
literature has a civilizing power, or so he writes in Rápido
tránsito:
...cumpliendo
así una función civilizadora, influyendo con obras bellas en la vida de
los otros, afinándoles las percepciones de sus sentidos, las reacciones
de su sensibilidad, haciéndolos con eso capaces de placeres superiores
más refinados y, por lo mismo, de una vida más alta y más profunda
(Coronel 155).
Hence, not only
the idea of the canal is declined through a critique of progress, but
rather a different model for the nation is drawn: not
technical-economic progress, but the idea of civilization. This is of
course quite close to the paradigm of progress, since civilization can
be seen as a form of social progress. But in Coronel's literary world
those are somewhat opposed, and the discussion is closer to a Latin
American constant in identity politics: the dichotomy of civilization
versus barbarism. The
This acts out
quite differently in Waslala because it was published many
years after Rápido tránsito and at a time when
In this sense,
it is also quite revealing to turn to the third citation which precedes
the novel, a passage of the poem Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson. If one thinks
of the intermediary position that Belli takes up (Dröscher 137) and
about the moment of publication (six years after the Sandinistas lost
the elections), it is possible to read the monologue of the aging
Ulysses as a call to national and international compañera/os:
“Tis not too late to seek a newer world” and further on:
Tho' much is
taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now
the strength which in old days
Moved earth and
heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper
of heroic hearts,
Made weak by
time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to
seek, to find and not to yield
(Belli: quotation at the beginning)
This call is
continued in the book, which foremost deals with the necessity to keep
on searching the utopia. Imagination – literary or otherwise – is the
key: imagination can change society, such
is the idealistic message of the novel. In this regard, it is quite
revealing to bring to mind again the romantic references both texts
use. The romantic period (esp. the “German” one) was not only
characterized by ideas about the blending of literature and politics
but also by ideas of the power of literature and that one could
encounter “truth” only in literature. This idea is also present in both
texts: With Belli, the fairytale becomes the ordering and
sense-conceiving structure, and with Coronel the non-literary “reality”
is often disappointing in comparison to literature: The Mississippi is
more beautiful with Mark Twain than the river which he sees with his
own eyes in New Orleans, and the Concord is disillusioningly small: “El
río Concord. De pocos ríos he
leído tanto como de éste. En prosa y verso, o simplemente en prosa. escribieron acerca de él Emerson, Thoreau y
Hawthorne. Tanta literatura ha corrido en su cauce que me lo imaginaba
más ancho” (214).
As one could see
throughout this article, a lot of literary texts have flown down the
riverbed of the
Notes
(1). I am not
the first to use this image of the ghost: For example, the sociologist
José Luis Rocha writes: “Antes, durante y
después de la temporada de los piratas, el fantasma
(2). Squier's
text was not translated into Spanish until over a hundred years later
(and without the canal study): Squier,
Ephraim George 1970:
(3). “Viajeros en el
río” has been published separately in Revista
Conservadora del Pensamiento Centroamericano (1964) and in Ernesto
Cardenal's anthology about the
(4).
Though no time data is given in the novel itself, the back cover reads
that the novel takes place in the 1st century of the third
millennium. Due to some geographical and political particularities,
Belli's Faguas can be read as representing
(5). For the issue of how Waslala is directed
towards internationalists, see Dröscher 2004.
(6). Squier's
original reads: “I never wearied in gazing
upon the dense masses of foliage that literally embowered the river,
and which, in the slanting light, produced magical effects of shadow on
water” (103).
(7). The idea
of manifest
destiny appears explicitly in the
prologue, when Squier explains his intention as to “awaken a true
sympathy in the hearts of the American people, for their simple, but
unfortunate friends and allies in Central America; or contribute,
however slightly, to impress the great truth upon this nation, that the
United States is the natural head of the great American family, and
that it is a duty which it owes, alike to God and man, to extend its
advice, its encouragement, and its support to the oppressed and
struggling Republics of Central America“ (xvii, xviii).
(8).
It seems that Coronel did not know about these revised texts (published
in
(9).
Twain's original reads: “damn the blackguard with the damaged plug hat
on who is looking over my shoulder as I make these notes on the boiler
deck” (40).
(10).
The appearance of the scientist could put
in danger the critique of progress which appears throughout the text,
because a sympathetic scientist does not go very well with the critique
of progress. Hence, firstly
(11).
Waslala was even published in German before it was published in
Spanish (although it has not been translated into English or other
languages so far).
(12).
The use of Waslala as the place of utopia is quite problematic, since
the North has suffered a lot in the Contra war and the actions of the
Sandinistas in the
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