THE CHARACTER OF THE NATIONAL ART and, above all of the literature, that the usual critics have defined and popularized, is based upon a misunderstanding, the misunderstanding of Peruvianism. Literary Peruvianism never existed after the Conquest, nor can it exist in the future.
The only Peruvianism that we can talk about that corresponds to an effective and exclusive reality is the retrospective Peruvianism of the Inca and pre-Inca cultures, which for us can no longer have anything but an archeological reality, [or] the virtual effect of an art gallery and museum. To a certain extent, this Peruvianism has largely contributed to keeping buried today’s authentic and lively Americanism, which is flourishing. There have been and still are people who believe that the secret of a national art resides in the huacas and huacos [the venerated objects] of the indigenous civilization. It tacitly expresses and promotes the regressive return to ages that are definitively dead. It forgets that we have advanced some centuries and, above all, that we have gone through the Western culture. Art does not dig up mummies, nor does it feed on hypogenous or funerary stones; it breeds new forms and realities. Inca art, as well as all ancient American cultures, may constitute pivotal creative moments and forms, but can never be exclusive factors in determining the new culture. The attempt to resurrect the remote past in order to achieve the future is absurd. Life that is ascending and superior is not regressive; it always provides continuity. From the European pleonasm, we want to switch to the regressive and barbarizing replay of the Inca spirit.
The more direct the national writers were, namely the closer they got to the reality of their environment, the more likely they reflected the colony as a poor copy of Spain. Or else, they reflected devitalized European art and thought, which in their hands became deformed and village-like. Peru was, and has always been, an ultramarine branch office of Castilla, a branch location that was rotten, a Hispanic ossuary.
It is annoying to see how intellectual activity is downgraded, leaving the finest values of European and Peninsular culture in the hands of Criollismo,1 which is funny and “zandunguero” [charming] (to use one of the popular words that best defines it). Colonialism is denounced and necessarily transcends it. It is a second hand version, ad litteram, of the style and manner of the classics and the Spanish majas and chulas. If a vernacular reality existed it was the tragedy of the Indian faced with injustice and the insolence of the conqueror and the Mestizos, but this was the case, in general, all over America and not exclusive to Peru.
I also do not believe it is possible to create an exclusively national art in the future. The national differences among the several Indo-American peoples are so minor and scant that they cannot generate independent arts and literatures with their singular rhythm and their own accent. I do believe in an Americanism that reflects the New America that is being born.
I believe in a new culture with its own universal values; values that we start to glimpse and which will help to integrate the human spirit. I believe in a cosmic vision and emotion that belong exclusively to the new race, which in turn has started to be articulated aesthetically and philosophically.
Until recently, America has been the garbage deposit and hypogeum of Europe. One need not have a very fine sense of smell to become aware of the decomposing corpse. America was the servile copy, the devitalizing, apelike gesture of the model. If we survey [the situation], it is enough to become clearly aware of it. The sepulchral environment is unquestionable.
However, as is always the case with broad vital processes, throughout the decomposition, sedimentation was taking place underground; so that the new spirit starts to emerge within an aesthetic context, that will rise more definitely across the centuries, and perhaps, across future millennia.
The Americanism that America has cultivated has been based on a misunderstanding similar to Peruvianism: on an optical illusion, on a mirage. It is that exploratory Americanism I have talked about on other occasions: superficial and verbal Americanism, alluding externally to geographic peculiarities, to fauna and flora of the continent; the exoticism of Baedeker,2 which pleases damaged tastes, and which refers, at most, to scenic décor, but is always mere gesticulation within a foreign aesthetic expression.
In order to cite a concrete example among many, I will refer to José Santos Chocano, who has been and is called the poet of America, but this being only a verbal allusion, an allegory of American geography and history. It is the gesture, the movement, and the stage effect. He accomplishes, sometimes, a Parnassian gesture that is descriptive and brilliant and thus increases the confusion, and reaffirms the equivocation. The simple allegorical allusion, the verbal or photographic version of the objective aspects of a territory, never constitutes a privative art. The objective forms, by themselves, do not express anything; they are dead if there is no soul behind them, if they are not the vehicle for a vision and emotion related to life and the Cosmos. The shapes in nature make sense if Man fills them with the drama in his soul, his personal thought or that of his race, so that they become integrated in an ensemble and constitute the symbol of a collective spirit. This does not mean that Chocano lacks aesthetic values. What I want to point out is that he lacks authentic American values; his values are Hispanic and European, in spite of the equivocation of Americanism.
The American nations are destined to form a vast racial block, with one culture and one ensemble thought, and never with exclusive and national arts. To pretend that there is a Peruvianism, an Argentinism, or a Chilenism in art is simply stupid.
We lack the experience of a privative art to such extent that what looks more national to us is intrinsically not so at all. First the Colonia, which is nothing but a Hispanic imitation, seemed national to us: for example, Ricardo Palma, in spite of his literary talent. Next, the simple geographic and historical allusion, the visual impression of territory, was considered national: for example, Chocano.
It is necessary to establish a new value system in order to appreciate what is national and, at the same time, American. What is substantially American is and will be expressed in the literature, in art, in the new thought. Criticism will have the initial task within a new culture. But it is evident that a strong Americanism is being accomplished in the oeuvre of the new generations. The decomposition of Europe in America is over or is about to be over. A new mental and emotional structure, authentically American, is starting to emerge. I do not believe I am overly optimistic or naïve, because the signs are highly evident.
America has been called the young continent that has been until today, I repeat, the garbage burial site for Europe. All of the European decadence and vices cross the ocean to decompose and die of malnutrition and devitalization. The spectacle of America, from the discovery until today has been the spectacle of old age and disintegration. Pio Baroja has told the truth when he called it the “stupid continent” that has created nothing for human civilization. For many centuries America accepted an infamous pupilage, not doing anything other than reproducing badly the thoughts of the European superior. You have to be a hero to immerse yourself in the reading of those massive American literary tomes which have the taste of dry leaves, leaves from which all vital juices have been drained; dry, insipid and overwhelming residue.
. . .
The youth of America today really begins to produce a new man, the product of the autochthonous race and of all of the races of the world that came to its territory to melt in a wide human embrace. The primitive and the invading race have died, or are agonizing, and the American lineage which is neither, but a new type and product is being generated. That explains why life in the new continent has been on hold and its history has been decaying old age, a slow secular death of the other races. That is why an American art, thought, science, industry, politics have not been possible.
We find ourselves in a transitional period, during which this young impulse claimed by its people bursts into the life of the world. While the old America makes thunderous, painful, and nostalgic sounds because of the extinction of the old life imposed by Europe, the young America readies its arm, brain, and heart to build the new and powerful life that its historic destiny and great human role exact. Now we can already talk about the youth of America as a vital fact and not as a mere accident for rhetorical usage. But, above all else, we must not forget that within the spirit of America, there is no room for what is national, restrictive, and negative in each country; instead, what is national is American.
1
Criollismo was a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary and artistic movement in Latin America that promoted regionalism and nativism.—Ed.
2
Baedeker, the German publishing house known since the early nineteenth century for its travel guides, published Baedeker: Lima-Callao y balnearios: guía de bolsillo para el turista, el comerciante y el residente in 1926, just two years before the publication of Orrego’s essay.—Ed.