The Narrative of Simulation in José Asunción Silva's De sobremesa

Abstract

This article examines the narrative of simulation in De sobremesa [After-Dinner Conversation] (1925) by José Asunción Silva (1865-1896). Since its publication, De sobremesa has been read as an autobiographical novel, leading to an interpretation of the protagonist’s life as Silva’s own. This article expands on such critical approaches and sees the impetus behind the novel as Silva’s desire to obliterate his real-life circumstances. Through an analysis of the central element of simulation as the articulation between life and oeuvre, I interweave the novel’s characteristic narrative of excess and Silva’s life of loss and economic scarcity. By examining the accounts of Silva’s contemporaries and reading his correspondence, I explore the way he disfigures and reconfigures his real condition and financial bankruptcy in De sobremesa to project a world defined by wealth and luxury. In so doing, he rewrites his loss and constructs himself as an artifice, a literary sign, that has its fictitious counterpart in the character of José Fernández. The article proposes a reading of De sobremesa that reveals an intricate relationship between author and character, being and appearing, writing and consuming, and writing and simulating in late nineteenth-century Latin American modernity.