Miguel Angel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (Guatemala City, October 19, 1899-Madrid, June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer, journalist, and diplomat who contributed to the development of Latin American literature. he influenced Western culture and, at the same time, drew attention to the importance of indigenous cultures, especially those of his native Guatemala.

Although Asturias was born and raised in Guatemala, he lived a significant part of his adult life abroad. During his first stay in Paris, in the 1920s, he studied anthropology and indigenous mythology. they are considered the first Latin American novelist to show how the study of anthropology and linguistics could influence literature. In Paris, Asturias was also associated with the Surrealist movement. He is credited with introducing many features of the modernist style into Latin American letters.As such, he was an important precursor of the Latin American boom of the 1960s and 1970s.

In El señor presidente, one of his most famous novels, Asturias describes life under the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera, who ruled Guatemala from 1898 to 1920. His public opposition led him into exile, which he endured much of his life abroad, especially in South America and Europe. The novel Men of Corn , which is sometimes considered his masterpiece, is a defense of Mayan culture. Asturias synthesizes her extensive knowledge of Mayan beliefs with his political convictions to channel both into a life of commitment and solidarity.His work is often identified with the social and moral aspirations of the Guatemalan population.

After decades of exile and marginalization, Asturias finally gained wide recognition in the 1960s. In 1965 he won the Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize. Then, in 1967, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, thus becoming the third non-American author to receive this honor —after Gabriela Mistral in 1945 and Saint-John Perse in 1960— and the second Hispanic American. Asturias spent his last years in Madrid, where he died at the age of 74. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Biography

Family and formative period

He was born in Guatemala City on October 19, 1899, as the first child of Ernesto Asturias Girón, a lawyer and judge, and María Rosales de Asturias, a school teacher. His brother Marco Antonio was born two years later. Asturias's parents were of Spanish descent, and relatively distinguished: his father could trace his family line back to settlers who had arrived in Guatemala in the 1660s; his mother, of more diffuse ancestry, was the daughter of a colonel. In 1905, when Asturias was six years old, the family moved into his grandparents' house where they lived a more comfortable lifestyle.

Despite his relatively privileged position, Asturias's father opposed the dictatorship of President Manuel Estrada Cabrera, who had come to power in February 1898. As Asturias later recalled: "My parents were quite persecuted, but they weren't conspirators or anything like that". he lost his job. In 1905, the family was forced to move to the city of Salamá, the departmental capital of Baja Verapaz, where Miguel Ángel Asturias lived on his grandparents' farm. It was here that Asturias first came into contact with the population. indigenous to Guatemala; her nanny, Lola Reyes, was a young indigenous woman who told her stories, myths and legends of her culture, which would later have a great influence on her works.

In 1908, when Asturias was nine years old, he returned with his family to the suburbs of Guatemala City. They established a supply store in the neighborhood of La Parroquia Vieja, where he spent his adolescence. Asturias attended the Colegio del Padre Pedro and later the Colegio del Padre Solís; as a student he began to write and made the first draft of a story which would later become the novel El señor presidente. Finally, he obtained his bachelor's degree in Sciences and Letters at the National Central Institute for Men.

In 1922, along with other students, he founded the Popular University, a community project according to which "the middle class is encouraged to contribute to the general welfare, by teaching free courses for the most disadvantaged". year studying medicine before going to the Facultative School of Law and Notaries of the National University. He obtained his law degree in 1923 and received the Gálvez Prize for his thesis on the problem of indigenous people. He also received the Falla Prize for Be the best student in your college. It was at the National University that he founded the Association of University Students and the Association of El Derecho students, in addition to actively participating in La Tribuna of the Unionist Party. This last group was the one that ultimately overthrew the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera in 1920. In reference to his literary work, Asturias' participation in all these organizations influenced many of the scenes in the novels El Señor Presidente and Viernes de Dolores. Asturias became involved in politics working as a representative of the General Association of University Students, and traveled to El Salvador and Honduras for his new job. In 1920, while at the National Central Institute for Men, he participated in the uprising against Manuel Estrada Cabrera, organizing strikes, Asturias and his classmates formed what is now known as "The Generation of 20".

Asturias' university thesis, "The Social Problem of the Indian," was published in 1923. In 1923, after receiving his law degree, he traveled to Europe. In Paris he studied ethnology at the Sorbonne—University of Paris—and became a dedicated surrealist under the influence of the French poet and literary theorist André Breton. In Paris he was also influenced by the Montparnasse circle of writers and artists and he began writing poetry and fiction. During this time he developed a deep concern for Mayan culture and in 1925 began the translation into Spanish of the Popol Vuh, the sacred text of the Maya, a project to which he devoted himself for forty years. he founded the magazine New Times while in Paris. He stayed in Paris for ten years.

In 1930 he published his first book Leyendas de Guatemala. Two years later, in Paris, Asturias received the Sylla Monsegur Award for the French translation of Leyendas de Guatemala and on July 14, 1933, he returned to Guatemala.

Political career

Michelangelo Asturias in front of the wall of sorrows in Israel.

Miguel Angel Asturias in his university student time.

When Asturias returned to his native country in 1933, he had his first encounter with the dictator Jorge Ubico and his regime that was not going to tolerate his political ideals. Ubico closed the Popular University that Asturias had founded in 1922. In 1933 Asturias worked as a journalist. He founded and edited a radio "magazine" called El diario del aire .He wrote several volumes of poetry around this time, the first being Sonnets , published in 1936.

In 1942, he was elected deputy to the National Congress. After the fall of the Jorge Ubico regime and the election of reformist president Juan José Arévalo in 1944, Asturias began a diplomatic career in 1946, continuing to write during his service in several countries in Central and South America. Asturias had diplomatic posts in Buenos Aires in 1947 and in Paris in 1952.

Family

Miguel Ángel Asturias married Clemencia Amado (1915-1979) in 1939. They had two children, Miguel Ángel and Rodrigo. They divorced in 1947. Asturias married a second time to Blanca Mora y Araujo in 1950. As Mora y Araujo was Argentine, when Asturias was expatriated from Guatemala in 1954, they went to live in Buenos Aires where they stayed for eight years. Asturias dedicated his work Week-end in Guatemala to his wife, Blanca, after its publication in 1956. They remained married until Asturias' death in 1974.

Rodrigo Asturias Amado, son of his first marriage, was a guerrilla commander of the ORPA and a member of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). Rodrigo Asturias adopted the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom , the name of a rebellious indigenous man in Hombres de maíz , his father's novel. The URNG was a guerrilla organization that opposed the military governments of the 1980s during the Guatemalan Civil War. After the signing of the peace accords in 1996, the URNG became a political party.

Exile and rehabilitation

Tomb of Miguel Angel Asturias in the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris, France, crowned with a replica of the Estela 14 of Ceibal.

Miguel Ángel Asturias devoted much of his political energy supporting the government of Jacobo Arbenz, the elected successor to President Juan José Arévalo. After the fall of the Jacobo Arbenz government, the new president, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, ordered Asturias to be stripped of his Guatemalan nationality and expelled from the country for his support of the previous government. During the following eight years Asturias lived in exile in Buenos Aires and Chile. After a change of government in Argentina, he had to look for a new home again and moved to Europe.During his stay in Genoa his reputation as an author grew with the publication of his novel Mulata de tal (1963).

In 1966, the president-elect Julio César Méndez Montenegro came to power in Guatemala and rehabilitated Asturias: his Guatemalan citizenship was restored to him and he was appointed ambassador to France, where he held the position until 1970 and took up permanent residence in Paris. In 1967 the English translation of Mulata de tal is published in Boston. and Asturias is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature «For his living literary achievements, strongly rooted in the national characteristics and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Latin America".

Death

Asturias spent his last years in Madrid, where he died of cancer in 1974. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tomb is crowned with a replica of Seibal Stela 14.

Major works

Novelist and poet of magical realism, influenced in his origins by realism, very soon, without renouncing that imprint, he ventured into his favorite field: aboriginal mythology, the land itself —the «telluric», in a very current—, in the sense of commitment to the troubles of the peasants subjected to the colonialist yoke, which can be seen in the titles of his works. Along with this, and a no less important facet, the quality and sounds of his prose hardly admit of comparison in 20th century Castilian literature.

He publishes Legends of Guatemala (1930) about native and mestizo myths and legends. In his famous novel El señor presidente (1946) he portrays a typical Latin American dictator —as Valle Inclán also did in Tirano Banderas, García Márquez in The Autumn of the Patriarch , Roa Bastos in Yo el supremo, Alejo Carpentier in The Method Resource or Vargas Llosa in La fiesta del chivo— for which used grotesque and burlesque procedures in order to forcefully describe the brutality and social oppression exercised by dictatorial governments. He wrote the scripts for the operas Emulo Lipolidón and Birth Images for the composer José Castañeda.

Monument to Miguel Angel Asturias in the Promenade of poetsRosedal of Palermo, Buenos Aires city.

Men of Corn (1949) is recognized by many as his masterpiece. In the novel, the voices and faces of opprobrium and injustice are appreciated, but in terms of crude colonial exploitation. For this, the most remarkable thing is that the author manages, in an almost supernatural way, to couple the language and rhythm of his prose to the characters he portrays, to their fantastic beliefs, their atavistic ways and customs.

Two of his main works are found along the same lines: Mulata de tal and Tres de cuatro soles, in which the author incorporates his anthropological knowledge into his novels. on Mayan mythology, masterfully relating, by appealing to a way of narrating strongly influenced by surrealism, the apparently exclusive worldviews of pre- and post-colonial Guatemala. In these works, the ancient Mayan gods unexpectedly recover their place in the contemporary world, as in Three of Four Suns, or are brutally replaced by new deities brought in and imposed by the various imperial powers. In this process, metamorphoses and changes abound, as can be seen in Mulata de tal, a book of great style, complex and wonderful. This diverse and culturally rich syncretic world survives fundamentally in the language of the poor and the exploited, a language that Asturias handles with singular skill, which allows him to show a world in one sentence and rehearse a poetics of the excluded and the oppressed. The author refuses to accept the cultural and human genocide that the colonial reality seems to impose on his people, and reaffirms the vitality of the latter, facing a literary enterprise that puts as main protagonists those victims subjected to the yoke of imperialist domination that, Despite their situation, they resist oppression, maintaining and reproducing their own identity in the most adverse conditions.

He insisted on similar themes in his following works, such as the controversial novel trilogy known as "The Banana Republic Trilogy" which is made up of: Strong Wind (1950), The Green Pope (1954) and The Eyes of the Buried (1960).

Miguel Ángel Asturias's plays are less well known, although he abounds in nonconformity and social criticism: Blackmail and Dique Seco, both from 1964.

Legends of Guatemala

Asturias's first published book was Legends of Guatemala (1930), a collection of nine stories exploring pre-colonial Mayan myths as well as themes of developing an identity Guatemalan national. His fascination with pre-Columbian texts such as Popol Vuh and Anales de los Xajil , as well as his belief in popular myths and legends, had a great influence on his work. Scholar Jean Franco describes the book as "lyrical recreations of Guatemalan folklore, drawing inspiration from colonial and pre-Columbian sources". anthropology to Spanish American literature." According to scholar Francisco Solares-Larrave, the stories are a precursor to the magical realism movement. Asturias used conventional writing and lyrical prose to tell a story about birds and other animals conversing with archetypal human beings. Asturias' writing style in Legends of Guatemala has been described by some as "story-dream-poems". In each legend, Asturias draws the reader in with a fury of beauty. and mystery without being able to comprehend the sense of space and time. Leyendas de Guatemala brought critical acclaim in France, as well as in Guatemala. Noted French poet and essayist Paul Valéry wrote of the book: "I discovered that a tropical dream was created, which I lived with singular charm."

Mr. President

El señor presidente, one of Asturias' most acclaimed novels, was completed in 1933 but remained unpublished until 1946, when it came out in Mexico as a private publication. As one of his first works, El señor presidente showcased Asturias' talent and influence as a novelist. Zimmerman y Rojas describe his work as an "impassioned denunciation of the Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera". The novel was written during Asturias' exile in Paris. During the making of the novel, Asturias was associated with members of the movement surrealist, as well as other future Latin American writers such as Arturo Uslar Pietri and the Cuban Alejo Carpentier. El señor presidente is one of many novels that explore life under a Latin American dictator and In fact, it has been heralded by some as the first real novel to explore the theme of dictatorship. The book has also been called a study of fear, because fear is the climate in which it takes place.

El señor presidente uses surrealist techniques and reflects Asturias' idea that indigenous people's irrational awareness of reality is an expression of subconscious forces. Although the author never specifies the setting where the novel takes place, the plot is clearly influenced by the rule of the Guatemalan president and dictator, Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Asturias's novel examines the way in which evil spreads downward from a powerful political leader, through the streets and in the houses of the citizens. Many themes, such as justice and love, are mocked in the novel, and escaping the dictator's tyranny is seemingly impossible. Each character in the novel is deeply affected by the dictatorship and must fight to survive in a different reality. terrifying. The story begins with the accidental death of a high-ranking official, Colonel Parrales Sonriente. The president uses the colonel's death to get rid of two men, when he decides to implicate them in the assassination. The president's tactics are seen as sadists, since he believes that his word is the law that no one should question. The novel then accompanies various characters, some close to the president and others seeking to escape his regime. The dictator's trusted adviser, known to the reader as "Angel Face", falls in love with Camila, the daughter of General Canales. Under the president's direct order, Angel Face convinces General Canales that an immediate escape is a must. Unfortunately, the general is one of two men the president is trying to implicate for murder; the president's purpose is to make General Canales appear guilty by being shot while fleeing. While the general is hunted for execution, his daughter is placed under house arrest by Cara de ángel. Cara de ángel is caught between his love for Camila and his duty to the president. Although the dictator is never named in the play, he bears unmistakable similarities to Manuel Estrada Cabrera.

In 1974, playwright Hugo Carrillo adapted El señor presidente into a play.

Corn Men

Hombres de maíz (1949) is generally considered Asturias' masterpiece, although it remains one of his least understood novels. The title Men of Maíz is refers to the indigenous Mayan belief that their meat was made from corn. The novel is written in six parts, each exploring the contrast between traditional indigenous customs and a modernizing society. The book explores the magical world of indigenous communities, a subject the author was both passionate about and knowledgeable about. The novel is based on traditional legend, but the story is Asturias' own creation. The plot revolves around an isolated indigenous community—the corn men or "corn people"—whose land is threatened by outsiders. for the purpose of commercial exploitation. An indigenous leader, Gaspar Ilom, leads the community's resistance against the settlers, who kill him in hopes of thwarting the rebellion. Beyond his grave, Ilom lives on as a "folk hero"; despite his efforts, he cannot prevent the people from losing their land.In the second half of the novel, the central character is a postman, Nicho, and the story revolves around the search for the lost wife of he. In the course of searching for him, he abandons his functions, tied as they are to "white society", and transforms into a coyote, which represents his guardian spirit.This transformation is another reference to the Mayan culture; the belief in nahualism, or the ability of man to assume the form of his guardian animal, is one of the many essential aspects for understanding the hidden meanings of the novel. Through allegory, Asturias shows how imperialism European dominates and transforms indigenous traditions in the Americas. By the end of the novel, as Jean Franco notes, "the magical world of indigenous legend has been lost"; but ends on a "utopian note", as people turn into ants to transport the corn they have harvested.

Written in the form of myth, the novel is experimental, ambitious, and difficult to comprehend. For example, his "time scheme is a mythical time in which thousands of years can be compressed and seen as a single moment"; furthermore, the book's language is "structured analogously to indigenous languages". Due to its unusual approach, it took some time before the novel was accepted by critics and the public.

The Banana Trilogy

Asturias wrote an epic trilogy about the exploitation of indigenous people on banana plantations, made up of the novels Viento fuerte (1950), El papa verde (1954), and The Eyes of the Buried Ones (1960). It is a fictionalized account of the results of foreign control over the Central American banana industry. At first, the volumes were only published in Guatemala in small numbers. His criticism of foreign control of the banana industry and the way in which indigenous Guatemalans were exploited eventually earned him the Soviet Union's highest award, the Lenin Peace Prize. This recognition marks Asturias as one of the few authors who were recognized for their literary works in both the West and the communist bloc during the Cold War period.

Mulata de tal

Asturias published Mulata de tal in 1963, when he was living in exile with his wife in Genoa, Italy. The novel received many positive reviews; Ideologies and Literature described it as “a carnival embodied in the novel. It represents a collision between Mayan Mardi Gras and Hispanic baroque." The work includes Mayan mythology and Catholic tradition to form an allegory of distinctive belief, and emerged as a major novel in the 1960.

Gerald Martin in the Hispanic Review commented “[it is] quite obvious that all the art in this novel is based on its language. In general, Asturias agrees with the visual freedom of cartoons, for using all the resources that the Spanish language offers. His use of color is surprising and much more liberal than in the first novels." Asturias constructed the novel with a singular use of color, a liberal theory, and a characteristic use of the Spanish language. His novel also received the Premio Silla Monsegur for the best Spanish-American novel published in France.

Themes

Identity

Guatemalan identity in the post-colonial era was influenced by a mixture of Mayan and European culture. Asturias, himself a mestizo, proposed a hybrid national soul for Guatemala, Ladino in its language, Mayan in its mythology. His quest to create an authentic national identity is central to Leyendas de Guatemala and is a theme ubiquitous in all his work. When asked by interviewer Günter W. Lorenz how he perceived his role as a Latin American writer, he replied: "...I felt that it was my vocation and my duty to write about America, that one day it would be of interest to the world." In the interview, Asturias identified himself as a spokesperson for his people, saying, «...Among the indigenous there is a belief in the Great Language. Great Tongue is the mouthpiece of the tribe. And in a way that's what I've been: the spokesperson for my tribe."

Politics

Throughout Asturias' literary career, he was continually involved in politics. He openly opposed the dictatorship of Estrada Cabrera, and later served as Guatemala's ambassador to various countries in Latin America and Europe. His political views are reflected in several of his works and include: the Spanish colonization of Latin America and the decline of the Mayan civilization; the effects of political dictatorships on society; and the exploitation of the Guatemalan people by foreign agricultural companies.

Guatemala Legends is loosely inspired by Mayan mythology and legends. The author chose to include legends ranging from the creation of the Mayans to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors hundreds of years later. He introduces the Spanish colonizers in the story "Legend of the Treasure of the Flowery Place." In this story, a sacrificial ritual is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of "the white men". The tribe scatters in fear of the intruders, their treasure being left behind in the hands of the white man. Jimena Sáenz argues that this story represents the fall of the Mayan civilization by the Spanish conquistadors.

Although El señor presidente does not explicitly identify early-century Guatemalan society xx as the setting for the novel, it is evident that the title character was inspired by the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera from 1898-1920. The character of the President rarely appears in the story, but Asturias makes use of several other characters to demonstrate the terrible effects of life under the dictatorship. This book was a notable contribution to the genre of the Spanish-American novel of the dictatorship. Ironically, Asturias was unable to publish the book in Guatemala for thirteen years, due to the strict censorship laws of the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico, who ruled Guatemala between 1931 and 1944.

After the end of World War II, the United States continually expanded its presence in Latin American economies. Companies such as the United Fruit Company manipulated politicians and exploited Guatemalan land, resources, and workers. The effect general was devastating in Guatemala and inspired Asturias to write the banana trilogy, a set of three novels published in 1950, 1954 and 1960. The three novels revolve around the exploitation of indigenous farm workers and the monopolistic presence of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala.

Asturias, concerned with the marginalization and poverty of the Mayan population in Guatemala, believed that socioeconomic development in Guatemala was dependent on a better integration of indigenous communities, a more equitable distribution of wealth in the country, and the reduction of illiteracy rates, among other prevalent themes. The inclusion of some of Guatemala's political and socioeconomic problems in his novels drew international attention to them.

Nature

For Asturias, Guatemala and America are a country and a continent marked by nature. Nahum Megged emphasizes that his work embodies the "fascinating totality of nature" and that he does not use nature solely as a backdrop for drama He notes that in his books the characters who are most in harmony with nature are the protagonists, while those who disturb the balance of nature are the antagonists. The theme of the erotic personification of nature is prevalent in his novels, as it is also in Leyendas de Guatemala when he writes, «The tropics are the sex of the earth».

Style

Asturias was greatly inspired by the Mayan culture of Central America, which forms a central theme in many of his works and greatly influenced his style of storytelling.

Mayan influence

Mayan vaso depicting a master of the underworld stripped of his headdresses and clothes by the young divinity of corn.

The Guatemalan society that exists today was founded on a foundation shaped by the Mayan culture. Before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, the Maya represented a highly advanced civilization politically, economically, and socially. This rich Mayan culture has had an undeniable influence on the literary works of Asturias. It believed in the sacredness of Mayan traditions. and tried to revitalize their culture by incorporating indigenous imagery and tradition into his novels. Asturias studied at the Sorbonne—the University of Paris at the time—with Georges Raynaud, an expert on Quiché Maya culture. In 1926, he finished the translation of the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quichés. Fascinated by the mythology of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala, he wrote Legends of Guatemala. Narrative work retells some of the Mayan folkloric stories of his homeland.

Certain aspects of indigenous culture were of singular interest to Asturias. Corn is an integral part of the Mayan culture. Not only is it a staple food, but it also plays an important role in the Mayan creation story described in the Popol Vuh. This particular story had a major influence on the novel Men of Corn, a mythological fable that introduces readers to the life, customs, and psyche of the indigenous Maya.

Asturias, who did not speak any Mayan languages, admits that his interpretations of the indigenous psyche were intuitive and speculative. In adopting such liberties, there are great risks of error. Nevertheless, Lourdes Royano Gutiérrez affirms that her work maintains its validity, because in this literary situation intuition served as a better tool than scientific analysis. Jean Franco classifies Asturias as an "indigenist" author, along with Rosario Castellanos and José Maria Arguedas. Franco argues that these three writers were led to "break with realism precisely because of the limitations of the genre when it comes to representing the indigenous". In Hombres de maíz for example, Asturias uses a lyrical and experimental style that according to Franco is a more authentic form of representation of the mind of the indigenous people than traditional prose.

When asked about his method of interpreting the Mayan psyche, Asturias was quoted as saying "I heard a lot, I guessed a little more, and made up the rest." Despite his "inventions," his ability to incorporate his knowledge of Mayan ethnology in his novels, make his work authentic and compelling.

Surrealism and magical realism

Surrealism had an important influence on Asturias's works. Characterized by its exploration of the subconscious mind, the genre allowed Asturias to cross the boundaries of fantasy and reality. Although Asturias's works were generally considered precursors of magical realism, the author saw many similarities between the two genres. In discussing the idea of magical realism in his works, he links the genre explicitly to surrealism, however he did not use the term to describe his own work. Instead, he used it in reference to Mayan stories that predate the European conquest of the Americas, stories like the Popol Vuh or the Annals of the Xahil. In an interview with his friend and biographer Günter W. Lorenz, Asturias discusses how these stories fit his view of magical realism and how they relate to surrealism, saying: "Between the "real" and the "magical" there is a third kind of reality. It is a fusion of the visible and the tangible, hallucination and dream. It is similar to what the surrealists around [André] Breton wanted and it is what we could call "magical realism"". Although both genres have much in common, magical realism is often associated with the literature of Latin America.

As mentioned above, the Mayan culture was an important inspiration for Asturias. He saw a direct relationship between magical realism and the indigenous mentality, saying: «...an indigenous or a mestizo in a small village could describe how he saw a huge stone turn into a person or a giant, or a cloud into a stone. That is not a tangible reality, but rather implies an understanding of supernatural forces. For this reason, when I have to give it a literary label, I call it "magical realism"". In the same vein, Lourdes Royano Gutiérrez argues that surrealist thought is not entirely different from the indigenous worldview or mestiza. Royano Gutiérrez describes this vision of the world as one in which the limit between reality and dream is porous, not concrete. represent the thoughts of an indigenous character. The style of surrealism and magical realism is exemplified in the works Mulata de tal and El señor presidente.

Use of language

Asturias was one of the first Latin American novelists to realize the enormous potential of language in literature. He had a very profound linguistic style that he used to convey his literary vision. In his works, language is more than a form of expression or a means to an end, and can be very abstract. It is not that language gives life to his work, but that the organic form of the language used by Asturias has a life of its own within his work ("Language has a life of its own").

Thus, in Leyendas de Guatemala a rhythmic and musical style of writing is noted. In many of his works he used techniques that are also found in pre-Columbian texts, such as onomatopoeia, repetition, and symbolism. His modern interpretation of the Maya writing style later became his own signature style. Asturias synthesized the liturgical diction found in the Popol Vuh, with a colorful and exuberant vocabulary. This style characteristic has been called "tropical baroque" by Royano Gutiérrez in his analysis of his most important works.

In Mulata de tal, Asturias fuses surrealism with indigenous tradition into something called "el Gran Lengua". In this Mayan tradition, people give magical power to certain words and phrases, so form similar to the song of a witch or a curse. In his narrations, Asturias restores power to words and allows them to speak for themselves: "The toro negros, the torobravos bulls, the torotumbos bulls, the torostorostoros."

Asturias uses significant Mayan vocabulary in his works. For a better understanding of the rich combination of Guatemalan and indigenous colloquial words, a glossary has been included at the end of Men of Corn, Leyendas de Guatemala, El Mr. President, Strong Wind, and The Green Pope.

Legacy

After his death in 1974, the government recognized his contribution to Guatemalan literature by creating literary awards and scholarships in his name. One of them is the country's most distinguished literary prize, the "Miguel Ángel Asturias" National Prize for Literature. Furthermore, in his honor the national theater in Guatemala City, the Miguel Ángel Asturias Cultural Center, bears his name.

Asturias is remembered as a man who strongly believed in the recognition of indigenous culture in Guatemala. In the words of Gerald Martin, Asturias is one of the "ABC writers"—Asturias, Borges, Carpentier—who, according to Martin, "really started Latin American modernism". Because of his experimentation with style and language, some scientists consider him a forerunner of magical realism.

Critics compare his fictional work to that of Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and William Faulkner for its use of the "stream of consciousness" style. His work has been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and many more.

Selected Works

The following is a list of selected works. A more complete list can be found on the Nobel Prize website, or in the Bibliography of Miguel Ángel Asturias.

Filmography

Some of the films based on his works are:

• Three fantastic stories (1964) (Argentina). Episode The deer of the seven roses about his homonymous story.
• Soluna (1967) (Argentina)
• Mr. President, (Argentina) led in 1969 by Marcos Madanes.
• The Presidentco-production of Cuba, France and Nicaragua led in 1983 by Manuel Octavio Gómez.
• Mr. President, Venezuelan film, directed in 2007 by Rómulo Guardia.

Additional bibliography