Shouldn´t Cumandá be included in the reading list for the bad literature course? In my first blog for that course, I tried in vain to find an aesthetic criterion for judging a book bad and found that most of what I considered bad resulted from subjective taste. But now I think I have found one on reading Cumandá: literature that is explicitly didactic and propagandistic is bad literature! An artist who uses art as a tool with which to inculcate a set of values tends to make bad art. And Cumandá is bad art. Mera´s intention is political and as a consequence the creative worth of his work suffers. Take, for example, character development. There is none. Both Carlos Orozco and Cumanda are totally flat characters without any psychological depth whatsoever. Since Mera´s aim is to exalt the two constituent races of his Nación so as to suggest their possible reconciliation, he resorts to stereotyped idealizations of noble savagery and christian charity and abandons the hard creative task of developing the nuanced characters with flaws who evolve over time necessary for such a reconciliation to appear credible. As a reader I felt nothing towards these most unlikely of characters.
Why is Cumanda not only pale skinned but christian? What are Mera´s intentions in representing her as such? To make her more palatable to racist criollo readers perhaps? If this is foundational fiction, the nation is off to a bad start indeed.
3 comments:
Heh, I can see why you might want to put the book on the "bad literature" course.
And yes, it's interesting: in some ways wants to promote mestizaje, bringing together indigenous and European; and yet in some ways not, in that Cumandá is the most un-indigenous of indigenous.
Meanwhile, a reminder to tag your entry with the label "span365"
I agree with many of your criticisms. I find, so far, that the love relationship is rather flat. About the fact that Cumanda is white and Christian, perhaps that is just a product of the times. Maybe if he had made her indigenous the story could have been too scandalous for the times? Or maybe the writer himself couldn't, along with societal norms, concieve a mixed-race love story for a novel? Either way, I agree that it is not an exemplary novel to hold onto as a nation-builder. Perhaps that says just as much about the present-day ideology of Ecuador as it does the 1800s.
I do agree with your comments although they might sound a little harsh. But there are definite areas in this novel that are either confusing or irrelevant. For instance the in-depth descriptions of the jungle and the use of native words are really irrelevant in this quasi love story. Some of the characters are weakly formed and they do not offer much in terms of depth for the novel. I find it interesting that this novel was chosen to be the first in our literature course. Maybe the reason for this was to slowly introduce us into this realm and this novel is definitely an easy one to comment on.
Post a Comment