MAQROLL THE GAVIERO: WITH NO PLACE ON EARTH BUT FULL OF SPIRIT

Manuel Apodaca Valdez

Abstract


In this study, the poetic work of Colombian Alvaro Mutis (1923 Bogotá-Mexico 2013) collected in his anthology Summa de Maqroll el Gaviero (2008) is analyzed. The study uses different poetics and literary theories (Calvino 1988; Mallarmé 2008; Todorov 1984; Hutcheon 2000) as well as a recurrence to various forms of Western thinking spanning skepticism, anarchism, and eventually, mysticism. In direct opposition to convention, the Colombian intellectual and poet draws from the best of such philosophical disciplines without committing thoroughly to any. Thus, Mutis creates a unique character who is able to survive all sorts of struggles in his adventurous life, embracing inertia and contradiction, with the only certainty that death is the final destination. Paradoxically, Maqroll’s best teaching to his followers is to live a wandering life in a world where everything is lost. In this way, Mutis’s poetry becomes revealing and disenchanted, able to transmit a sense of liberation of the spirit, which is achieved by destroying prejudices and ideas imposed by ideology and power.


Keywords


Alvaro Mutis; Maqroll the Gaviero; Latin American poetry; Poetry and philosophy

References


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