A late but fruitful start
Tranquility and discretion, two adjectives that do not clash with the image that we have of Costa Rica, and that do not seem totally fanciful when we compare the date of arrival of the first inhabitants - several millennia before our era - and that of the premises of literature, at the dawn of the 19th century. Logically, the first writings coincide with the appearance of educational structures, so we could recall the memory of the Nicaraguan-born professor Rafael Francisco Osejo who, in addition to his involvement in politics at the time of Costa Rican independence, taught literature and philosophy at the Casa de Enseñanza de Santo Tomás (from its creation in 1814), and above all, wrote numerous textbooks, mainly devoted to the sciences (astronomy, seismology, mathematics). In a second phase, the importation of a press facilitated the emergence of journalism - in the 1930s at least two titles were created: El Noticioso Universal and La Tertulia - and of academic or religious literature. With the foundations thus laid, and with the importation of foreign works to complement them, fiction found all the leisure it needed to unfold under the pen of Manuel Argüello Mora (1834-1902), whom some consider the country's first novelist for his Misterio, first published in 1888 in a magazine under the title Risas y llantos (Laughter and Tears) : Escenas de la vida en Costa Rica. This text, to which the author gave as much autobiographical value as historical, drew a portrait of his fellow citizens as members of the same nation, thus outlining the definition of a national identity. Mora also wrote about his uncle, Juan Rafael Mora Porras, who was president of Costa Rica and whom he followed into European exile.
At the end of the century, the country was experiencing political upheavals that led, despite everything, to reforms. This modernist trend - which also rhymes with literacy - was carried by a circle of intellectuals nicknamed Generation Olympus (or 1900) to which writers such as Pío Víquez (1848-1899), Manuel González Zeledón, known as Magón (1864-1936) and Carlos Cagini (1865-1925) belonged. The first of these became known for his work as a journalist, founding El Heraldo de Costa Roca, a political periodical. His influence is undeniable in a post-colonial society that is still trying to find its bearings and common values among the different peoples that make it up, and his work serves as a marker in an era that is unquestionably devoted to liberalism. Magón's work is more in the realm of "costumbrismo", a movement (of Spanish origin) that draws on local folklore. He began his career by describing a typical Costa Rican Christmas Eve in the newspaper La Patria , in which he published a weekly column inspired by the life of the peasants and the landscapes of his childhood. He will only be the author of one more substantial work, La Propria, which will be awarded a prize in a competition organized by the magazine Páginas Ilustradas. Finally, Carlos Cagini also worked to consolidate national identity, but in a completely different field of expertise: linguistics. He created grammars and dictionaries, resolutely freeing himself from European contributions and expressions.
Fundamental, the Olympus Generation will be so until the end since it will open the way to Modernism. The link between these two impulses is Aquileo Echeverría Zeledón (1866-1909), the "national poet of Costa Rica" as Rubén Darío, founder of the modernist movement, called him after meeting him in Nicaragua. Echeverría was not, strictly speaking, influenced by his friend - his poetry was more like costumbrismo, as demonstrated by his famous Concherías (1905) - but he certainly contributed to making him known in Costa Rica, especially since the Nicaraguan stayed there and even composed some poems. On the other hand, Rafael Pacheco (1870-1910), Lisímaco Chavarría Palma (1873-1913) and Roberto Brenes Mesén (1874-1947) are clearly affiliated with the modernist movement, whether in its symbolic vein or in a more lyrical genre.
Towards realism
Born in 1881 in Desamparados, Joaquín García Monge is also a tutelary figure of Costa Rican literature, not only because he published in 1900 El Moto, a costumbrismo novel that became a classic, nor because he gave his friend María Quesada, a feminist activist and children's author, his pseudonym of Carmen Lyra, but because he initiated another generation called "Repertorio Americano", named after the magazine he wrote, maría Quesada, a feminist activist and children's author, his pseudonym of Carmen Lyra, but because he initiated another generation, the so-called "Repertorio Americano", named after the magazine he published from 1919 until his death in 1958. A champion of democracy and pacifism, of freedom and tolerance, it opened its columns to debate and to some of the greatest intellectuals of the time, including the poet Julián Valle-Riestra (his Ales en fuga is also a classic), the artist Max Jiménez (1900-1947), the engraver Carlos Salazar Herrera (1949), the writer and the writer's assistant (1949), and the writer and editor of the magazine Repertorio Americano, the engraver Carlos Salazar Herrera (1906-1980), who published more than twenty short stories, and the great poet Isaac Felipe Azofeifa (1909-1997), who would receive many awards throughout his career, which would extend from Trunca Unidad in 1958 to Orbita in 1996. With their freedom of tone, their acid descriptions of a society that had experienced many defeats, from the First World War to the dictatorship imposed by Tinoco in Costa Rica from 1917 to 1919, these young authors laid the foundations of realism, a trend closely associated with the Generation of 40, of which Monge, with his outspokenness and exacerbated lucidity, was finally the precursor.
This new generation, which emerges while a second world conflict is rumbling, finds its inspiration in the numerous questionings fueled by the awareness of social problems and the gangrene of external influences. It was no longer time for reform, but for what had every reason to be a revolution, even if the lines of thought that emerged could sometimes seem contradictory. To advocate a new order and new models, even if it means bordering on marginality or praising it, seems to be the credo of those who do not hesitate to criticize liberalism or to condemn the coffee oligarchy, which they believe is the cause of all inequalities. Thus, José Marín Cañas dwells in his novel Pedro Arnáez (1942) on the fate of a miner, while Carlos Luis Fallas, who was very involved in trade unionism and the communist party, denounces the fate of the workers of the United Fruit Company in Mamita Yunai (1940) before exploiting the autobiographical vein in Marcos Ramírez (1952), an initiatory tale of a young Costa Rican at the beginning of the 20th century for which he was awarded a prize by the William Faulkner Foundation. It is still widely read today, although we are not fortunate enough to be able to read it in our own language. Joaquín Gutiérrez Mangel (1918-2000), also a recipient of the prestigious Magón Prize, had a successful career as a globetrotter in journalism, wrote his first verses at the age of 14 and became a chess champion. Fabian Dobles, who began his career in the Repertorio Americano, became known for his Historias de Tata Mundo, which was included in the list of World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, Alberto Cañas, Minister of Culture and diplomat, who created the National Theater Company of Costa Rica in 1971, and above all Georges Debravo (1938-1967) who showed great social concern in all his poetic production(Nueve poemas a un pobre Amor muy humano, Vórtices, etc.)
The contemporaries
At a time of increasing industrialization and important population movements towards the cities, four poets - Laureano Albán, Julieta Dobles, Carlos Francisco Monge and Ronald Bonilla - wrote and signed in 1977 a Manifesto trascendentalista that invited to a return to the sensitive, to the use of metaphor, to lightness, to interiority.. In spite of a short polemic, and although this current still exists, it is difficult to evaluate the impact of this invitation which nevertheless has the attraction of being the first of its kind in Costa Rica. More globally, the "Urban Generation" (1960-1980) - Eunice Odio, Carmen Naranjo, José Léon Sánchez, Samuel Rovinski... - continues to criticize the system, while the next generation seems to succumb to a certain disenchantment, continuing to challenge but seeming to run out of solutions to oppose a state that has not been able to keep its promises. However, this generation is also the one that allows itself new forms of writing and greater freedom in the themes addressed. One of its leading figures is undoubtedly Anacristina Rossi, born in 1952 in San José, who with María la noche (Mary at night, published by Actes Sud) blurs the lines, initiating an impossible dialogue between two voices - one female, the other male - that are so singular.
It is of course difficult to foresee the directions in which contemporary authors will take their work, although they seem to have in common the desire to free themselves even more from the traditional codes, or even from the boundaries or literary genres. Thus, although Coral Herrera was born in Madrid in 1977, it is in Costa Rica that she pursues a work that is dedicated to such current issues as patriarchy or the queer question, while Daniel Quirós, two years younger, now lives in the United States where he teaches and devotes himself to detective novels (translated into French by L'Aube: Pluie des ombres, Été rouge, La Disparue de Mazunte...). Finally, in a completely different style but with just as much success since he won the 2019 Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story award, comic artist Edo Brenes has won over his audience - even French, thanks to Casterman who had the wise idea of translating it - with a graphic novel that explores his family memory, Bons baisers de Limon.
