De Errabundos Y Nomadas: La Desarticulacion Del Motivo Del Viaje en La Literatura Latinoamericana Contemporanea

Abstract

To show the subversion and transition from the heroic journey which presupposed revelation, development and return, to the antiheroic philosophy of vagabondage in which prevails a poetics of negation (of memory, nostalgia, identification, knowledge and familiarity), I discuss Alvaro Mutis' La Nieve del Almirante (1986), Osvaldo Soriano's Una sombra ya pronto seras (1990) and three short novels from Joao Gilberto Noll, Hotel Atlântico (1989), A ceu aberto (1996) and Canoas e marolas (2000). These novels, I argue, propose that since life is exile, one is condemned to a nomadic existence. However, the instinctive longing of a center of integrity never disappears in its totality. Therefore, the destination of these wanderings is irrelevant because the physical movement itself becomes a vital response to death, defeat and hopelessness. Although home is unattainable and in other cases, unimaginable, the poetic that arises from these chaotic and disorienting displacements is one of reaffirmation of life even if it is lived in dislocation in a disastrous world that keeps loosing its frontiers and its meaning.