Jose Maria Arguedas
The Pongo’s dream
This is a funny but thought-provoking “joke”. When you finish reading it, you may burst into laughter at first, then you’ll start to think about the meaning behind it. I can feel the deep gap between the lord and the serfs. The lord treated the serfs as beasts or robots without emotions who just worked for them instead of human beings. And the serfs just took it for granted. They have lost their dignity as a human. Meanwhile I was impressed by the serfs’s indifference when Pongo was tortured. I wondered if this kind of situation still exist in today’s world. But luckily Pongo revolted at the end, and author stopped suddenly, leaving us the space to imagine.
Miguel Angel Asturias
Legend of the Singing Tablets
Legend of the Crystal Mask
Legend of the Silent Bell
Legend of the Dancing Butchers
This reading is quite difficult for me. So I tried to search some material about the author. According to Wikipedia, Miguel Angel Asturias (October 19, 1899 – June 9, 1974) was a Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan poet-diplomat, novelist, playwright and journalist. Like Jose Maria Arguedas, he also grew up among an environment surrounded by indigenous people. And they both tried to draw the public’s attention to the importance of indigenous cultures. But they are not merely narrow traditionalism, they combined the reality with the tradition. Asturias’s genre is about surrealism and magical realism(which I know little for the time being). I had difficulty in understanding these four stories, but I can still feel that they were very beautiful. There’re many symbols of the indigenous culture. It is impossible to write such kind of stories without the deep love to this land. I hope one day I can read the story fluently in English, or even in Spanish.
Nobel Prize for Literature in Latin America
(Laureate, Country, Language, Genre, Year, Citation)
Gabriela Mistral
Chile Spanish poetry 1945
—-“for her lyric poetry, which inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world”[46]
1.Miguel Ángel Asturias
Guatemala Spanish novel, poetry 1967
—-“for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America”
2.Pablo Neruda
Chile Spanish poetry 1971
—-“for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams”
3.Gabriel García Márquez
Columbia Spanish novel, short story, screenplay 1982
—-“for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts”
4.Octavio Paz
Mexico Spanish poetry, essay 1990
—-“for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity”
5.Mario Vargas Llosa
Peru Spanish novel, short story, essay, drama, memoirs 2010
—-“for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”