La memoria y el yo en El río del tiempo de Fernando Vallejo

Abstract

This paper addresses the work El rio del tiempo (The River of Time) by Colombian author Fernando Vallejo (Medellin, Colombia, 1942∼) from a literary perspective as the avenue through which the development and reflection of the memory can be understood. In other words, the work offers us a place where we can see the points of intersection between collective memory (cultural and historical) and the individual memory of the narrator (el “viejo”-the “old man”) presented to us as the namesake of the actual author. It is clear that the five novels that make up El rio del tiempo are presented as the retrospective account of the life of the narrator, and that where memories rise to become the protagonist in order to construct the subjectivity or the figure of the self is of vital importance not only in understanding how his work deals with different mechanisms of an intertextual memory (hesitation, repetitive compulsion, betrayal or forgetfulness, etc.) but also other types of memory of a “paratextual” nature coming directly from the author himself-from his non-fiction, interviews, and speeches. Through all this material can clearly be seen the absolute character that underlies all of Vallejo`s work, particularly the thematic and compositional coherence of it. From this, we can see aspects that reveal the discovery of the “voice” or “narrative identity” and certain factors of continuity and rupture of the author-narrator in regards to his different memories (cultural and historical). Similarly, although the paper does not seek to overstress those textual elements that create an auto-fictional writing style, it does indeed consider them as a mechanism that allows greater freedom of expression, and that makes them capable of exhibiting their own tragedy: exile, the selective nature of memory, and death. These factors give his writing unity, which consequently constitute a “means of survival” despite the wishes of the author-narrator of diluting into nothingness.