The greats of literary modernism were under-read during their lives, subsisting on incomes from literary magazines and pamphlets in combination with day jobs, and generally considered societal outcasts. Of course, there were exceptions. T.S. Eliot received 630 pounds for the publication of The Waste Land alone, and Virginia Woolf increased her literary income by founding the Hogarth Press out of her dining room in 1917. However, the majority lived poorly. They wrote, and they starved. They existed as outcasts from society while creating their own flourishing literary culture through letters exchanged, literary magazines, and private gatherings. They starved, and they wrote of the world as it deteriorated around them, questioned what it means to be human in a rapidly changing world, searched for meaning amidst the rejection of religion and traditional values. The literary modernists grappled with devastation, morality, and political oppression in the face of fascism, two devastating World Wars, and the largest, systematic genocide to date.
In the short novel By Night in Chile or Nocturno de Chile by Roberto Bolaño, the priest, poet, and literary enthusiast, Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix lies on his death bed. He issues his final sermon or speech, a long, meandering recollection of his life and career. The narrative is muddled, the syntax improper, the story concealed. However, beneath Urrutia’s obscured recollections rests harrowing truths. The priest befriended a Wehrmacht officer, attended the literary salon of a couple who tortured individuals for the government, and tutored the Junta and military dictator, Pinochet, on communism, the very political philosophy they sought to destroy. Urrutia lies on his death bed, and must recollect his sins before he goes with those sins being complicity and aid to a fascist regime, the befriending of a Nazi, and silence in the face of unjust torture. Urrutia, a man who has dedicated his life to religion, has failed to uphold the true teachings of Opus Dei and now must face the wizened youth who confronts him with his crimes. He knows the wrongness of his past, but he comforts himself with uncanny lies, “The wizened youth has always been alone, and I have always been on history’s side” (Bolaño 117). Deep down he knows, has witnessed murder, has questioned his actions, has directly felt the haunting nature of oppression, but he will not admit his wrongs, even in his dying breaths.
Instead he maintains himself as a priest and literary man. He demands, “more culture! more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those whole were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index finders, and they were not many” (Bolaño 96). How can a man who endorses fascism also praise the writings of rebellion? How can a man that befriends a Nazi also read writing about the carnage of war. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land shows a desolated landscape and society after WWI, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace depicts the trials of the Napoleonic war on Russian aristocratic families. Ezra Pound translated poetry from Chinese and was involved with communism. Chilean poet Neruda wrote extensively on South American history and politics and was a proud communist. Vallejo, a Peruvian poet, was deeply involved with social justice movements and included themes of oppression and human suffering in his works. Essentially, every outcast modernist writer whom the narrator praises was on the opposite side of history from himself. They were not with history, but against it. They were the victims, the rebels, the political inciters, and their works sought to understand the individual, oppressive systems of government and economy, and morality in the modern world—most of whom would not gain recognition until well after their deaths. Clearly Urrutia and these writers’ values and persons were not the same.
Urrutia’s involvement with the literary community beginning with his homoerotic friendship with the literary critic, Farewell, and expanding to the attendance of acclaimed writers homes, a job writing on the deterioration of church architecture, and frequenting literary salons makes his knowledge of modernist literature inevitable. However, this alone does not explain his praise and commendation of these great writers who wrote about themes which directly contradict the political movements in which Urrutia and his acquaintances were involved with. Pinochet was a military dictator who banned all communist parties after his rise to power during the 1973 military coup in Chile. Ernst Jünger was a Wehrmacht officer, and the salon hostess’s husband tortured people in their basement to aid the regime. Considering the content of literary modernism, these texts should not only be disdained but banned by the regimes which Urrutia supported due their politically incisive powers that directly threaten their oppressive, fascist, and militaristic practices. However, instead these literary masterpieces are acclaimed, not only by Urrutia but also the literary circles he participates in. General Pinochet enjoys his lessons on communism and its literature and Jünger and Urrutia bond over their shared love of literature and culture. Opposing ideologies are bound together as by the collective appreciation of culture and literature, and perplexingly cited as material which can make the world better. Urrutia calls for more culture as he supports the messages of these works, but the inherent opposition of these works with his political activities creates a paradox which makes it essential to understand the reasons why Urrutia can support these works.
Oblivion is a peaceful thing. When one forgets all wrong, they forget their pain, their guilt. When one proclaims they are on the right side of history, it does not matter who they are or what they’ve done because they were on the right side of history and the right side is always determined by perspective. Or perhaps by unity. As Urrutia said, there is “little difference between a rebel and a fascist”. Ernst Jünger gained the friendship of Urrutia by introduction of a Guatemalan painter. One afternoon they visit the painter’s apartment at the same time where they admire a painting together. Jünger supposes that it must be a painting of Mexico City. The bright colors undoubtedly make it foreign. Only, the portrait was not of Mexico City, but the carnage of WWI, meaning that the Nazi officer cannot even recognize violence, nor its consequences. His admiration of the painting rests entirely on his misunderstanding of the piece. Perhaps, his failure to see devastation was willful or perhaps it was truly by accident, but the result is the same. A modernist artwork of carnage becomes something which a Nazi can praise and perception becomes the negotiator between fascism and rebellion.
Observation grounds perception. Perhaps even more so, what one chooses to observe grounds their perception, and the social acceptability of an action or idea determines what we choose to know. Urrutia willfully muddles his recollection of his life. He quickly surpasses details which disturb him and neglects all information which feels uncomfortable, even should it mean turning away from himself, his religion, or his values. He recalls, “But I still cannot have been properly awake, for deep in my brain I could hear the voice of the popes, like the distant screeching of a flock of birds, a clear sign that part of my mind was still dreaming or obstinately refusing to emerge from the labyrinth of dreams…” (Bolaño 51). The sentence continues far beyond what can be considered grammatical proper, and his surroundings blur away like in a dream. In this convoluted remembrance of his life, the popes are ever present, screeching, obscuring. Urrutia has spent his life believing himself to be a moral man for he was a religious man, but his confrontation with death cannot help but show the incorrect details of his memories. The popes are a flock of birds, screeching, and the birds continue to kill around him.
He remembers, “The falcon traveled in a box. When we reached our destination, Fr. Pietro took the falcon out and flung it up into the sky. I saw it fly and swoop down on a pigeon and I saw the pigeon shudder as it flew” (Bolaño 65). This image of birds has haunted him. The murder of a pigeon by a falcon should not be the horror upon one’s death bed. Falcons were commonly used as a means to protect church architecture. They were released so that with their superior hunting skills and power, they would eliminate pests that would pose a threat to old, ornament, stone architecture. Urrutia should favor the falcons considering his academic work on the preservation of these ancient, holy sites, but instead he remembers watching their pigeon shudder in pain, a reminder that even the smallest also suffer. He recalls, “But one mustn’t forget that pigeons or doves are the earthly symbol of the Holy Spirit, are they not?” (Bolanño 68). This simple statement reveals the discovery of hypocrisy, the corruption in the church. The unholy falcon murders the holy pigeon just as the unholy priest neglects the holy citizen as the unholy dictator condemns his holy people. Thus, a symbol of the church and subjugation, for the falcon must subjugate the pigeon, becomes one of evil in the dying mind of Urrutia. He spouts a narrative which a modernist might have done, the condemnation of corrupt cruelty by an overly-dominant power. He begins to reveal the true source of his fear. After a lifetime of denial, he has seen hypocritical subjugation, and he has been silent.
The memory continues. “Ta Huele appeared again like a lightning bolt, and swooped on the huge flocks of starling coming out of the west like swarms of flies, darkening the sky with their erratic fluttering, and after a few minutes the fluttering of the starlings was blondies, scattered and bloodies, and afternoons on the outskirts of Avignon took on a deep red hue” (Bolaño 66). The violence has escalated. There is no longer one victim, but many. The falcon has become the perpetrator of the genocide of the pidgeons, and the sky is painted red. Urrutia’s friend, Fr. Antonis, passes away. On his death bed, he speaks, “It’s wrong, my friend, it’s wrong. I saw a flock of falcons, thousands of falcons flying high over the Atlantic ocean, headed for the Americas” (Bolaño 72). The violence is spreading, reaching over oceans. The violence is colonialism, imposing fascism and genocide on foreign lands. Fr. Antonis represents a parallel to the narrator. He has spent his life as a member of the church, only to confess corruption in his dying breaths. Fr. Antonis also faces the Wizened Youth, is forced to confront having chosen to support cruelty rather than be marked as an outcast. He has seen wrong, ignored it, and faced the guilt of destruction and complacency on his death bed when there is no longer any time to make amends.
The repetition of the story of a man who supports institutions despite their slipping moral values is the story of a man living in a globalized world. Bolaño writes of men who aspire to be good, but only manage to fuel corruption in a demonstration of the complexities of existing under fascism, control, and strict social expectations. The modernist writers who broke societal boundaries are easy to praise, but much harder to emulate as the surpassing of societal wrongdoings requires separating yourself from society and losing your place in the world. Rebellion means being alone. Rebellion means suffering. Therefore, when asked to teach the Junta about communism, Urrutia will do it. When faced with the choice of condemning a Nazi or continuing his literary career, he will be complacent to the Wehrmacht officer for the other choice requires sacrifice. It requires dedication and perseverance against a system which harms Urrutia, himself, very little. When asked to ignore torture, he will do so as he is not the one being tortured and would prefer to maintain his literary circle. It does not matter that he reads and supports the modernist ideas of equal rights, freedom, and individuality because when faced with institutional control he will cave at every possible danger. Urrutia is an average man, and despite his crimes, he narrates, “I shrugged my shoulders like a wounded bird” (Bolaño 89). Every average man is an enforcer of corruption, but also a victim to its claws.
The possibility for a man to exist as both a rebel and a fascist, as someone who supports an authoritarian, military dictatorship and as someone who admires the great literary modernists is an unbelievable paradox. Perhaps it is in human nature to seek meaning, to rebel, but also to be afraid, and Urrutia is only a victim to his own frail humanity, or perhaps the characters in Bolaño’s novel truly are just unaware of these contradiction. However, both of these answers seem too simple, for the true idea raised in Bolaño’s work seems to be the role of perception in manipulating our worlds. A modernist novel that argues against fascism can be read by a fascist as perception allows individuals to read what they want to. Books are digested through personal frameworks of lived experiences and ideologies, making the written word an unstable medium through which entirely opposite ideas can be drawn from the same text. Bolaño’s By Night in Chile acknowledges this paradox and poses the question of how any literary or cultural media can argue against authority or in favor of humanitarianism, when every piece of art can easily be interpreted in polarizing ways. His novel questions the very ability of the individual to understand morality and themselves as the modernists so direly sought to do. Thus, Bolaño deconstructs the very framework of literary modernism by asserting the nihilistic idea that nothing can be certain, for everything is up to interpretation. It is as Nietzsche once wrote, “every interpretation is just an interpretation.”
However, Bolaño also acknowledges the instability of chosen perception against reality which death makes all the more prominent. Men are faced with their sins before they go. Social condemnation is no longer a risk, and they cipher through their memories to discover the ambiguities that have haunted them all their lives. Oblivion withdraws and consequences haunt their guilty imaginations. The death of Urrutia is a symbol for the death of western ideologies, complacency, and corruption, and the Wizened Youth is the one who kills him. The Wizened Youth holds the power to reshape an unjust world.
In Bolaño’s novel, literature, philosophy, and culture have failed to empower a more just society, for these ideas all come from a westernized world, from interpretations of the fascist’s work. There is no original thought within them, but mere contaminations and montagues of former ideas. In Bolaño’s world, culture has failed, and a new type of change must be developed through a confrontation with time, the elimination of colonial influence, and an action-based or more material means of expressing ideas, which cannot as easily be misinterpreted. The modernists wrote against fascism, but the means of government merely transported itself from Europe to Latin America and other colonized regions. Now these regions must fight to free themselves, and the answer can only be found in deconstruction, rather than interpretation, and the Wizened Youth, the outcast, or the rebel will be the one to destroy the already muddled and crippling past.
Aubrey Wallen Literary Journal and Papers 