Artist and Critic as Self and Double in Cortazar's Los Pasos en las huellas

Abstract

AS Latin American literature receives more and more attention throughout the world, the role of the literary critic not merely in describing and evaluating but even in shaping that literature becomes increasingly important. By choosing which writers they wish to study, praise, or condemn, critics and scholars have the power to make or break an author. And, by establishing and promulgating a critical canon of desirable traits and objectives for a particular genre, critics can force new authors and even those who have already established a traditional mode of writing to conform to their dicta. Thus, for example, if critics reward attention and esteem to authors who display sophisticated technical innovations in their writing and who develop new forms of language, many aspiring authors will emulate these traits and will write novels in which the concepts of plot and characters, now deemed outmoded by some of the critics, will be minimized or eliminated altogether. As the power of the critic increases, the relationship between artist and critic becomes increasingly sensitive. Often the artist, who advocates freedom in his aesthetic expression, resents being forced into a mold by dogmatic critics who judge him or her by preconceived and, often, by highly subjective standards. Not only aesthetic but, frequently, ideological standards are imposed upon the artist. Thus, in many cases the creator who has achieved international fame because of his imaginative vision is constrained by his critics to become a political spokesman for his country-to speak out on national issues, to utilize his art as a weapon against social injustice and oppression that are rife in many Latin American countries. Renowned artists like Borges and Cortdzar, who cultivate the literature of the fantastic and who in most instances wish to keep their art separate from political ideology, are accused of escapism-of avoiding the burning issues of their country and retreating into a world of linguistic and metaphysical games. At the beginning of his novel Rayuela, which depicts a protagonist who like Cortizar himself has fled Argentina to reside in Paris, the author rebuts those critics who seek to convert him into