Old and New Worlds
The year 1499 marked the arrival of the Spanish and the decline of the Chibchas, who until then had populated the region of Bacatá, now Bogotá. However, a myth survived and found an echo with the conquistadores: El Dorado. Strangely enough, the story ricochets since Christopher Columbus (to whom Colombia owes its name, in homage, even though he didn't discover it), thinking he was visiting the Indies, was about to find there the golden pagodas described by Marco Polo (who was in fact referring to Burma). Now, the Chibchas - who venerated Bochica - had a customary ceremony during which their chief, covered in golden powder, immersed himself in the Lake of Guatavita, and received as an offering objects, composed among other things of the precious metal, thrown to him by his people. The same veneration for gold that stirred up the country's old and new occupants helped to build the myth, justify bloody battles... and an unquenchable thirst that drove Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (1509-1579) almost to madness. Some believe he served as the model for Cervantes' Quixote (1605). As booty, the Spaniards also received the many languages spoken by the natives, all related but among which Muisca was preferred as the language of Christianization. Alas, here again, despite the efforts of Dominican friar Bernard de Lugo to fix this idiom in writing in a work dated 1619, the language of the colonists quickly imposed itself, to the detriment of the original culture. In 1589, Juan de Castellanos wrote his Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias, in which he evoked the early days of colonization, particularly in Colombia, where he had arrived in 1544, and drew up a precise description of the Indians. This testimony is invaluable, as much for what it tells us as for what it reveals about the humanity of the person who wrote it.
The chroniclers soon gave way to the poets, but the latter, although born on the South American continent, remained under the influence of the currents that were stirring up old Europe, particularly Spain, with which they were still affiliated. One of the best representatives of this period is Hernando Domínguez Camargo, born in Bogotá in 1606, even if his style, part of the cultism movement, may now seem very dated. Inspired by the work of Luis de Góngora (1561-1627), he adopted a baroque style, convoluted and overloaded to the point of excess, in his Poema heroico de san Ignacio de Loyola and his satirical sonnet A Guatavita. On the other hand, Francisco Álvarez de Velasco et Zorrilla (1647-1703), author of Rhytmica Sacra and Moral y Laudatiria, was a great admirer of Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, whose approach was the complete opposite of Góngora's: "conceptisme", an aestheticism characterized by its direct, unadorned approach.
From religion to politics
Whereas their predecessors had focused mainly on religious themes, writers born in the 18th century were to devote themselves more to political issues. For the time being, Francisco Antonio Zea (1766-1822) already embodied the Colombian Enlightenment, fighting for educational reform in a country that was then enjoying great intellectual effervescence, thanks in particular to the advent of printing and the press. Journalists, travelers and professors gathered in circles and, as a man of science, Zea made his contribution in botany, a passion he pursued alongside his growing patriotic investment. His perfect contemporary, Camilo Torres Tenorio, also born in 1766, also took on political duties after honing his eloquence as a lawyer, earning him the nickname "The Word of the Revolution", which he put to good use in Memorial de Agravios, in which he criticized the Spanish government and defended Creole minorities. Although this manifesto was published only belatedly, this did not prevent him from spearheading the federalist movement, which violently opposed the centralist tendency. Last but not least, the poet José Joaquín Ortiz (1814-1892), a worthy representative of the issues preoccupying his time. With La Bandera colombiana(The ColombianFlag), his most famous work, he not only made his ideas known, but also became the literary link between neoclassicism and Romanticism. In 1871, he helped found the Colombian Academy of Language, based in Bogotá, and opened the door to a new generation of writers, including playwright Julio Ardoleda Pombo (1817-1862), poets Gregorio Gutiérrez González (1826-1872) and Julio Flórez (1863-1923), and above all Rafael Núñez (1825-1894). President of the Republic and initiator of the Regeneración, the latter also became a poet. Although the verses of his Himno Patriótico were adopted as lyrics for the national anthem, they are only part of his writing oeuvre, which includes poetry(Versos in 1885, Poesías in 1889) and essays, both journalistic and political.
That said, the Romantic movement was also invented in the "costumbrismo" movement, a Spanish specificity that spread to Europe and South America, where it took on a nationalist dimension. Josefa Acevedo de Gómez (1803-1861), one of the first women to take up the pen, not without difficulty, is closely linked to this art of describing habits and customs, as are José Caicedo Rojas (1816-1898) and José Maria Cordovez Moure (1835-1918), both of whom joined El Mosaico. This group, founded in 1858 by Eugenio Díaz Castro (1803-1865) and José María Vergara y Vergara (1831-1872), aimed to build a national literature based on folklore, and its authors published in an eponymous magazine until 1872. Jorge Isaacs (1837-1895) was also one of them, submitting his first poems to his peers, but it was with his novel María that he became famous. Published in Colombia in 1867, the story recounts the difficult, even impossible, love affairs between protagonists from different social classes or ethnic groups. Considered a masterpiece, the novel was translated into French and English several times. Finally, the life and literary work of Tomás Carrasquilla (1858-1940) stand at a crossroads: witness to the changes that were shaking up his country's political landscape, he was also influenced by costumbrism and then by modernism, which was already taking shape in the work of José Asunción Silva, the author of Nocturne, who committed suicide at the age of 31 in 1896, and in that of Guillermo Valencia Castillo (1873-1943), nicknamed "El Maestro".
Before turning to modernism, which was to be embraced by several generations of writers, let's mention two authors who once again prove that the world is changing: Soledad Acosta de Samper (1833-1913), who took up the feminist cause, and Candelario Obseo (1849-1884), the precursor of Poesía Negra y oscura. He used the language of the Afro-Colombian community in La familia Pygmalion, Lectura para ti and Cantos populares de mi Tierra, published posthumously in 1887, since his short life ended in suicide at the age of 35, following a heartbreak that was the last proof of the discrimination he had suffered because of the color of his skin..
From modernism to the modern age
The first generation to truly assert itself in modernism was the so-called "Centenary" generation, which appeared in 1910, the year independence was commemorated. They include Porfirio Barba-Jacob(Canción de la vida profunda), Eduardo Castillo(El árbol que canta), Aurelio Martínez Mutis(La Epopeya del cóndor, La Esefera conquistada), and above all José Eustasio Rivera (1888-1928), who won second place in the Tunja Floral Games. A prolific poet, his most famous work is a novel, La Vorágine (1924), based on real events and describing the exploitation of the inhabitants of the Putumayo region. But post-modernism was already making its mark, led in particular by the emblematic León de Greiff (1895-1976), a disciple of the Symbolists and figurehead of the Los Nuevos group founded in 1925, notably with Rafael Maya (1897-1980). Some fifteen years later, a new group was formed under the name Piedra y cielo, in homage to a title by the future winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Spaniard Juan Ramón Jiménez. Its most prominent members were Arturo Camacho Ramírez, Jorge Rojas and Eduardo Carranza. The rejection of conventions and traditions, which served as a common thread through these different periods and revolutionized poetry in depth, culminated in "Nadaism", close to nihilism and existentialism, and linked to the Beat Generation, with which bridges were created. An avant-garde and counter-culture movement, willingly subversive and even highly ironic, Nadaism was initiated by Gonzalo Arango Arias (1931-1976), who published its First Manifesto in 1958. Arango Arias was a particularly unifying figure, bringing together writers as diverse as Fernando González Ochoa (1895-1964), whose Viaje a pie he prefaced in 1967, and Amílcar Osorio and Jotamario Arbeláez, two young authors born in 1940.
With this new, more critical approach, literature would henceforth draw on reality, and the writer would assume the role of witness, which, in view of the turmoil and violence that marked the 20th century, became a necessity. In any case, tongues are wagging, and the metaphor remains weak in view of the editorial effervescence, with dozens of authors, some of whom have broken the translation barrier. The most illustrious is Gabriel García Márquez, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Born in Aracataca in 1927, he died in Mexico City in 2014, leaving a prolific body of work, often associated with Magical Realism, whose masterpiece is without doubt One Hundred Years of Solitude. But we mustn't forget his friend Álvaro Mutis, whose novels and stories are now available in French from Grasset (Le Dernier visage, Un Bel morir, Les Carnets du palais noir) and their many successors. Without aiming to be exhaustive, we could mention Laura Restrepo(Délire, Calmann-Lévy), Andrés Caicedo(Traversé par la rage, Belfond), Mario Mendoza Zambrano(Satanas, Asphalte), Héctor Abad Faciolince(L'oubli que nous serons, Folio) or Juan Gabriel Vasquez(Chansons pour l'incendie, Seuil).
