The Modern Mexican Essay 9781487577520

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THE MODERN MEXICAN ESSAY

THE MODERN MEXICAN ESSAY

edited by

JOSE LUIS MARTINEZ translated by H. W. HILBORN

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Copyright, Canada, 1965 by University of Toronto Press Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018

ISBN 978-1-4875-7866-4 (paper)

Translator's Preface

ALTHOUGH THE MORE SUPERFICIAL FEATURES of the Latin-American countries are becoming better known to North Americans as a result of improved travel facilities, their cultural and economic problems still remain largely unappreciated. The Rockefeller Foundation, aware of this fact, has seen fit to encourage work of the kind here undertaken by supporting the translation of some of the more significant LatinAmerican scholarly and literary works into English. The translator would like to express his gratitude to the Foundation, to the Association of American University Presses, which administers the Foundation's grant for this purpose, and to the University of Toronto Press for assistance from its Publications Fund. The original collection, entitled El ensayo mexicano moderno, was edited by Jose Luis Martfnez and appeared in two volumes. 1 In selecting the essays to be included in this translation, I have had in mind primarily the presentation of a Mexican national outlook, in the hope that more people may be led to interest themselves in the psychological and spiritual aspects ( as well as the economic and practical considerations) of the country that lies immediately to the south of the Rio Grande. It would be difficult to discover any problem confronting the modern Mexican, or almost any member of the LatinAmerican community of nations, that does not receive attention in this anthology of essays. The essays in this collection are not exercises in journalistic polemics. They are, almost without exception, of high literary quality, and they should make a profound impression on the English-speaking reader, except perhaps where the translator's efforts may have fallen short of the mark. One important influence on the selection of this anthology of essays for translation was the recognition of the fact that Canada and Mexico have certain features in common. In 1953 Malcolm Ross published a 1 El ensayo mexicano moderno, Letras mexicanas 39 and 40, Fonda de Cultura Econ6mica, Mexico, 1958.

Translator's Preface

vi

collection of essays by Canadian writers under the general title Our Sense of Identity. 2 The essays in that collection revealed clearly that Canada was developing a national consciousness, a consciousness of being unique, neither completely British nor completely American ( that is, of the United States) in culture and outlook. Mexico, like Canada, received an Old World culture with the occupation of her soil by Europeans. Like Canada, too, she has sought emancipation from European rule, but by the revolutionary method of the United States rather than by Canada's slower evolutionary process. While Mexico resembles the United States in the method employed for the achievement of her independence, she is like Canada in her relationship to other powers and in her desire to develop a still unrealized national consciousness. Mexico and Canada often feel overshadowed, and perhaps even smothered, by the presence of the United States colossus on their frontiers. Both Canada and Mexico are confronted with the problem of economic dependence upon the United States and are striving to achieve greater independence in this sphere. Both want to be a nation, but they are unsure of their national status and stature. A national literature is essential for a nation that desires to be complete, but neither Canada nor Mexico feels absolutely certain of possessing such a literature, except as an appendage to an older literature. The two volumes of Mexican essays translated herein are of much broader scope than the Canadian essays in Our Sense of Identity. A number of the essays in El ensayo mexicano moderno lie somewhat outside the specific area of an expression of national consciousness, and in order to reduce the great bulk of material by about one-quarter, certain essays have been excluded. This has been done with regret, because those omitted are generally by no means inferior in quality to those included ( in a number of cases, au contraire), but their omission seemed to provide the remainder of the collection with a greater unity of theme than is evident in the original volumes. The essays that have been excluded fall under the following headings: ( 1) Essays not intrinsically Mexican in theme, such as those by Antonio Caso, Carlos Diaz Dufoo (Jr.), Julio Torri, Francisco Monterde, Antonio Castro Leal, Alfonso Junco, Salvador Novo, Gabriel Mendez Plancarte, Rodolfo Usigli, Edmundo O'Gorman, Antonio Acevedo Escobedo, and Fernando Benitez; ( 2) Essays relating to colonial times or to the early post-colonial period, such as those by Jesus T. Acevedo, Enrique Fernandez Le2Ryerson Press, Toronto.

Translator's Preface

vii

desma, Genaro Estrada ( one of the three in the original collection), Hector Perez Martinez, and Silvio Zavala; ( 3) Familiar essays on trivial themes ( though written with charm and artistic skill), such as one essay by Jose Vasconcelos, two by Genaro Estrada, one by Alfredo Maillefert, one by Mauricio Magdaleno, and one by Andres Henestrosa; ( 4) Themes obscure for the English-speaking reader, such as essays by Genaro Fernandez MacGregor and by Eduardo Villaseiior. As indicated, the reduction in bulk was made chiefly for the purpose of achieving greater concentration on a general unifying theme. Like the essays included, those omitted reveal much about the national culture and the psychology of the Mexican, but they do not give direct expression to a common national concern: Mexicanism. For this reason I have performed the rather presumptuous pruning operation which I hope will give a clearer view of the fruit without leaving too many traces of the pruning-hook. The editor of the original collection, Jose Luis Martinez, is an eminent Mexican scholar and critic. In 1949, when just past the age of thirty, he published a two-volume book on twentieth-century Mexican literature, 3 and in 1955 he published two volumes dealing with Mexico's literary emancipation. 4 The anthology presented here in translation ( with omissions as indicated) was published in 1958, and was doubtless an outgrowth of Martinez' monograph of 1955. The encouragement of a Mexican national spirit is patently the primary incentive throughout, but Martinez is also concerned with avoiding the taint of isolationism. While these essays broaden our understanding of what is distinctive in Mexicanism, they concentrate on presenting the Mexican consciousness of belonging to the whole of ·western culture, and their appeal is therefore of a universal nature. Martinez prefaces his anthology with a detailed study of the essay as an art form. The essayists are then presented to us in a roughly chronological order, and so a sense of the growing national consciousness is developed as one reads through them. The first of the essays date from the last decade of the nineteenth century, the point at which Martinez perceives the first flowering of Mexico's literary and intel3 Mexican Literature. Twentieth Century (Literatura mexicana. Siglo XX), Antigua Libreria Robredo, Mexico. 4 The Literary Emancipation of Mexico ( La emancipaci6n literaria de Mexico), Antigua Libreria Robredo, Mexico; The National Expression ( La expresi6n nacional), Irnprenta Universitaria, Mexico.

viii

Translator's Preface

lectual modernity, marked by a decided break with the Romanticism which had lingered in Spanish America long after its decline in Europe. At first, however, this modernity was not a mark of real independence, although the influence in Spain of Ruben Dario of Nicaragua had suggested that cultural communications between Spanish America and Europe were already established as a two-way street. A development accompanying this realization was the recognition that Mexican literary culture must seek inspiration in its own linguistic heritage, and that French influences alone could not replace the ties with Spain that had been broken by the independence movement. These essays reveal Mexican cultural nationalism as a plant of slow growth, one grounded in a full consciousness of its roots. The important question of the extent to which these roots are European and the extent to which they are Indian is a constant source of debate. Ethnically, the Indian obviously predominates, but culturally the need for European inspiration, with Spanish as the only serviceable national language, is made manifest by the essayists. The earlier essays in this anthology deal with Mexico's cultural past and the literary figures that contributed most significantly to it. Only a few of the essays belong to the period preceding the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which overthrew the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and initiated experiments in land redistribution and in political democracy, a process which is still going on. Although several essays reflect the struggles that followed this upheaval, a comparatively large number of them deal with purely literary and philosophical themes, from which one is tempted to draw the conclusion that their authors were insensitive to or detached from the political ferment of those days. Such a conclusion would be unjust, however, since the Mexican intellectual has not felt it necessary to confine his vision to the consideration of immediate realities in order to show his awareness of practical problems. Throughout the anthology, the authors' sense of responsibility for the Mexican as a man, and their consciousness of the need to foster his full development as such-with education and culture indispensable ingredients in this process-stand out clearly. The depressing realities of social conditions in Mexico are not ignored in these essays. Iturriaga's analysis of the Mexican character, in his essay of 1951, is a sombre portrait, but the final note, typically, is one of faith in the Mexican's latent spiritual power and vigorous national personality. The contrast of opulence and misery is not regarded as permanent, and without exception the writers presented

Translator's Preface

ix

to us through Martinez have something vital to say about their nationa nation that they envision as one of great potentialities, seeking greatness in the conquest of poverty, disease, and ignorance, and in the moral, intellectual, and artistic progress of its people. HARRY

w. HILBORN

Note: Numbered footnotes are those of the translator. Footnotes appearing in the original edition are indicated by symbols.

Contents

TRANSLATOR's

PREFACE,

by Harry W. Hilborn

INTRODUCTION, by Jose Luis Martinez

v 3

Justo Sierra (1848-1912) Prologue to the Poems of Manuel Gutierrez Na;era The Festival of Sodzil Discourse at the Inauguration of the National University

19 33 31

Jose Lopez Portillo y Rojas ( 1850-1923) Prologue to The Plot of Land

55

Manuel Gutierrez Najera ( 1859-1895) Aesthetics of" Prose

61

Francisco A. de Icaza ( 1863-1925) Mexican Letters

66

Luis G. Urbina ( 1868-1934) Origin and Character of Mexican Literature

15

Amado Nervo (1870-1919) Let's Speak of Writers and Literature

83

Rafael Lopez ( 1875-1943) Provincial Mayors

91

Jose Vasconcelos ( 1881) Sadness Books I Read Sitting and Books I Read Standing Glad Pessimism The Embittered

96 97 100 105

Carlos Gonzalez Pefia ( 1885-1955) Provincial Slumber

111

Martin Luis Guzman ( 1887) My Friend Credulity The Unpopularity of the Senses

116 118

xii

Contents

Ram6n L6pez Velarde ( 1888-1921) Masterpiece In the Ancestral Home The New Homeland Ashes and Poplars The Punitive Flower Meditation on the Public Walk Ioseph of Arimathea Filth The Rout of Language Mother Earth

122

123 124 126

127 128 129

130 131

136

Alfonso Reyes ( 1889) Palinode on Dust Aristarchus or the Anatomy of Criticism Parrasio or Moral Painting Born in '89 Notes on the American Mind

155 168 169

Manuel Toussaint ( 1890-1955) The House of Sugar-paste in Puebla American Art

179 182

Jesus Silva Herzog ( 1892Meditations on Mexico

187

Ermilo Abreu Gomez ( 1894Literary Refiections

141 144

) )

217

Julio Jimenez Rueda ( 1896-) Mexico in Search of Her Expression

223

Alfonso Caso ( 1896-) Is the Mexican Indian a Mexican?

230

Samuel Ramos (1897-1959) Psycho-analysis of the Mexican Creole Culture

239 250

Daniel Cosio Villegas ( 1900American Problems

263

Jaime Torres Bodet ( 1902) Refiections on the Novel Duty and Honour of the Writer

281 290

Contents

xiii

Xavier Villaurrutia ( 1903-1950) Painting Unmarked The Face and the Portrait The Poetry of Ramon Lopez Velarde

301 307

Jorge Cuesta ( 1903-1942) Modern Art Salvador Diaz Miron French Culture in Mexico Mexican Classicism

335

310 327

339 343

Augustin Yafiez ( 1904) Meditations on the Indigenous Soul

356

Justino Fernandez ( 1904) Orozco, Genius of America

369

Cesar Garizurieta ( 1904) Catharsis of the Mexican

376

Andres Iduarte ( 1907) Cortez and Cuauhtemoc: Hispanicism, Indigenism

395

Antonio G6mez Robledo ( 1908Philosophy and Language

406

)

Leopoldo Zea ( 1912) Concerning an American Philoso-phy

424

Octavio Paz ( 1914) Introduction to the History of Mexican Poetry The Disembodied Word

455

Jose E. lturriaga ( 1914) The Character of the Mexican

472

Arturo Amaiz y Freg ( 1915Panorama of Mexico

492

438

)

Emilio Uranga ( 1921) The Mexican and Humanism

504

Pablo Gonzalez Casanova ( 1922) Propaganda or the New Rhetoric

510

THE MODERN MEXICAN ESSAY

Introduction Origins and Definition o-f the Essay

but the thing is ancient," 0 said Bacon with respect to the term "essay." So ancient that essayistic touches may be recognized in oriental books and in books of the Old Testament, as well as in various Greek and Latin texts. t Nevertheless, the self-contained essay, with its own name and no longer intermingled with religious or philosophical meditations, does not appear in its plenitude and with all its shadings and possibilities until the Essays of Montaigne, the first version of which is dated 1580. Among the many passages in which Montaigne reflects upon the nature of his own writings, one seems to me singularly illustrative since it defines not only the peculiar spirit which inspires the essay, but also the greater part of its characteristics. "TIIE WORD 1s LATE,

Judgement is a necessary instrument in the examination of every kind of subject, and for that reason I exercise it at all times in these Essays. If I am dealing with something I do not understand, all the greater is my reason for making use of it, sounding the ford from a great distance; then, if I find it too deep for my size, I stop at the shore. The conviction that I can go no further is evidence of the value of judgement, and evidence of the most cogent character. At times I take a fancy to build upon a trite and trivial theme, seeking something upon which to support and construct it; Bacon, Essays, Dedication to Prince Henry, 1612. example, in Proverbs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament; in the maxims of Confucius and the teachings of Lao-Tse; in various Greek texts and especially in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, the Parallel Lives of Plutarch, the Dialogues of Plato, Aristotle's Poetics, and Theophrastes' Characters; also in passages of Horace's Poetic Art, Quintilian's Oratorical Institutions, the letters of Pliny the Younger, Cicero's Offices and Marcus Aurelius's Soliloquies-perhaps, along with Seneca's Moral Treatises, the two books of antiquity which most merit being considered as essays-the Confessions of Saint Augustine, and Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. 0

t For

4

The Modern Mexican Essay

at other times, my reflections turn to a noble and thoroughly discussed subject in which nothing new can be found, since the road has already been travelled over so much that nothing can be done but follow the course others have taken. In the first type the judgement is unshackled, chooses the way that best suits its inclination, and among a thousand paths decides that this one or that one is the most attractive. I select at random the first theme. For me all are equally good and I never propose to exhaust any of them, because I contemplate none in its entirety; this is not the claim of those who promise to treat every aspect of a thing. Of a hundred parts and facets of any given thing, I select just one, sometimes to fondle it, sometimes to dally with it, and sometimes to penetrate to the marrow. I reflect about things, not with comprehensiveness but with all the profundity of which I am capable, and usually I like to examine them from the most uncommon angle. I would venture to deal with some subject with thoroughness if I knew myself less well and lacked consciousness of my limitations. Casting forth one phrase here, another there, like parts separated from the whole, wayward, without design or plan, it must not be expected of me that I produce a finished piece of work or that I make a concentrated effort. I take a new turn when it pleases me and yield to doubt and uncertainty, and to my habitual pose which is that of one who does not know. 0

The features peculiar to the essay which Montaigne explicitly proclaims in this passage may be summarized as a voluntary lack of profundity in the treatment of a theme, a capricious and rambling approach to it, and a preference for the unusual point of view. We may here recall that Bacon in his Essays, published shortly after those of Montaigne (in 1597), defines the new genre as dispersed meditations. But in addition to these explicit features, in both Montaigne's and Bacon's essays, there are other features implicit which definitely establish the characteristics of the new genre. The new features are: discursive exposition, in prose;t the length, which varies greatly, and may range from a few lines to several hundred pages, but with the apparent presupposition that it can be read at a single sitting; finally, its typifying of the individualistic mentality which the Renaissance creates, and which is marked by, as Burckhardt has described it, "a multiple knowledge of individual things in all their shadings and 0 Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chap. 1, "On Democritus and Heraclitus." I follow the translation of Constantino Romany Salamero (Gamier, Paris, 1912), revising it with reference to the original text. t Nevertheless, the English poets Dryden and Pope wrote authentic essays in verse on preceptive and philosophical themes. The Metamorphosis of Pwnts ( Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen), by Goethe, is also an essay in verse.

Introduction

5

gradations,'' 0 in the form of descriptions of mental states, biographies, and external portrayals of human beings and animated scenes from life. The most concise and exact expression that is current with regard to the essay is "literature of ideas."f In fact, the essay is a hybrid genre in that it contains elements of two different categories. On the one hand it is didactic and logical in the exposition of thoughts or ideas, but on the other hand, on account of its effusive flexibility, its ideological and formal liberty, in short, on account of its subjective quality, it generally has literary relief as well. According to the patterns and denominations established by Alfonso Reyes in Boundaries,t the essay is an ancillary mode of expression, that is, it carries on an interchange of services between literature and other disciplines expressed in written thought. By virtue of its form or its verbal artistry, it may have an aesthetic dimension in the quality of its style, but at the same time it requires a logical dimension, rather than a literary one, in the exposition of its themes. By its indicated subject matter it may relate to themes definitely in the domain of literature, such as those pertaining to fiction, but in the majority of cases it concerns itself with subjects belonging to other disciplines: history, science, etc. First of all, therefore, it is a peculiar form of the suggestive communication of ideas, in which the ideas abandon all pretensions to impersonality and impartiality in order boldly to take on the advantages and limitations of their personal basis and bias. In the purest and most characteristic essays any theme or subject is converted into an intimate and individual problem; it is shot through with human resonances, is frequently enlivened by a humorous touch or a certain intellectual coquetry and, abandoning whenever possible the fallacy of objectivity and of didactic seriousness, as well as exhaustiveness in exposition, it enters wholeheartedly into an "historicism" and presents itself as a witness, as a personal and provisional judgement. Nevertheless, even the most rambling and capricious mental game requires, to a greater or smaller "Jacob Burckhardt, The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy ( La cultura del Renacimiento en Italia), translated by Ramon de la Serna, Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1942, pp. 250 ff. t Xavier Villaurrutia called the essay "a form midway between journalism and philosophic system": Texts and Pretexts ( Textos y pretextos), La casa de Espana en Mexico, 1940, p. 104. tAifonso Reyes, Boundaries, Introductory Discourse on Literary Theory ( El deslinde, Pro'leg6menos a la teoria literaria), El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico, 1944, pp. SO ff.

6

The Modern Mexican Essay

degree, some expository precision; and precisely in the varying proportions of these two elements-originality in mode and form of thought on the one hand, and logical systematization on the otherlie the bases of the different types of essay. Opposed to the subjective, free, and capricious form of essay which comes into being with Montaigne, then emigrates to England to be reincarnated in the journalistic essays of Addison and Steele, and later flourishes with Lamb, Hazlitt, and Stevenson and returns to France with Gide and Alain, there soon arises another form, expository, organic, and impersonal, the origin of which may be attributed to Bacon. To this form, which reaches its apogee in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, belong the elaborate and extensive disquisitions in eighteenth-century style-like the Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of Nations . . . ( Essai sur les moeurs et resprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l'histoire depuis Charlemagne ;usqu'a Louis XIII), 1756, by Voltaire or the Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne), 1811, by Humboldt-and in the age of Romanticism, the massive critical, philosophical, or historical essays of Macaulay, Emerson, Thiers, SaintVictor, Brunetiere, and Menendez Pelayo. Related Forms and Categories of the Essay

Such flexibility and amplitude in the definition of this '1iterature of ideas" has given rise, in the course of history, to ramifications into several forms closely related to the essay, which do not express either diversified functions of the mind or determined forms of written thought, but in general are simple stratifications of non-narrative prose which follow laws vaguely conventional, and in varying degrees approach or diverge from literature or the