DE LA REGIÓN EN EL EPISTOLARIO Y LA OBRA CRíTICA DE TOMÁS CARRASQUILLA

Abstract

The work of Colombian writer Tomas Carrasquilla evidences the authenticity of a narrator who, in the process of cultural evolution of Colombian and Latin American literature, establishes a historical framework: in his quest for self-expression, he turned his vision to America, particularly to the characters and situations of the people of Antioquia, his home province. His writing also becomes the first to offer a broad array of historical and fictional literary worlds, expanded and elaborated by later generation of well-known authors such as German Espinosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alvaro Mutis who, in their unique styles, were able to turn the “complex cultural sides” of Colombian society into something more universal and widely recognizable. But the work of Tomas Carrasquilla is not only confined to his fictional world. In fact, through the letters (epistles) and various critical essays published by the writer in magazines and newspapers at the time, he reveals a tension that allows us to understand a unique and very personal aesthetic outlook where local or regional elements do not suffice as literary qualifier or leitmotif. The letters and the critical essays allow us to trace the clear and coherent vision between his theories and the assumption of a writing style that we don’t find in any other author until the mid-twentieth century. The tension generated by the political period known as “Regeneration” and the position taken by “centralists” that the country’s capital (Bogota) should be the center of administrative power as well as that of aesthetic ideas are, in part, the basis for Tomas Carrasquilla’s refreshing attitude. This article focuses on the revelation of his artistic principles and also on some intricacies of the said “regenerative project”, essential to understanding the work and life of the author.