4 - More than Words Can Say

Summary

To depict realistically is not to portray or copy but rather to build rigorously, to construct objects that exist in the world in their particular primordial shape … it is a question of representing before our eyes, in an intuitive way, the fact, the interior figure, of the exterior world.

(Roh 1995, 24)

Parecía como si una lucidez penetrante le permitiera ver la realidad de las cosas más allá de cualquier formalismo.

(Cien años de Soledad, Edición de Jacques Joset, p. 305)

Introduction

In the previous chapter, I examined the claims of Latin Americanists that magical realism emerged from their continent due to its unique history, geography and racial mixing. It was demonstrated, by the analysis of key passages in García Márquez's novel and Ovid's poem, that there are many factors that can explain the use of magical realism, ranging from political and cultural to literary traditions. In this chapter, I continue to examine the claims of Latin Americanists, in this instance, focusing upon the aesthetic effect of magical realism, rather than the reasons for its appearance.

When Roh first coined the term ‘magic realism’ in his 1925 essay on Post-Expressionistic art, he was striving to define the essence of what he saw as a return to the object, the thing in itself, after the flight of fancy and abstract imagination that was the Expressionistic era in painting.