Asuela, Mariano

Born in the family of a small landowner. He studied surgery in Guadalajara . He began to write during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz . Mariano Asuela gained fame for his short stories written during the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Throughout his literary career, he has gained recognition as a playwright, literary critic, and short story writer. His first novel was Maria Luisa, then he published Andres Pérez - Maderist ^[5] ( 1911 ). After the overthrow of the dictatorship, he became the mayor of his hometown, but abandoned this post, seeing how the old elite, pretending to be revolutionaries, returns to power - the novel “Andres Perez is Madeira” is dedicated to this topic. After the fall of the regime of President Francisco Madero , Asuela joined the revolutionary forces of Pancho Villa as a military doctor. After the defeat of Villa Asuela, he ends up in El Paso , Texas , where he begins the book Those Downstairs ( 1915 ), the first novel about the Mexican Revolution that brought him popularity. "Those Downstairs" is published in the El Paso newspaper in 1916, but the novel will receive fame only in 1927 ^[6] .

In 1917, Asuela moved to Mexico City, where he continued his work and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942, he received the Mexican National Literature Award. On April 8, 1943, Mariano Asuela became one of the founding members of the Mexican National College and in 1949 received the National Prize of Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City on March 1, 1952 and was buried in the Rotunda of prominent people .

In his work, Mariano Asuela tried only to fix the reality surrounding him "without changes and stylization." When portraying heroes, he avoided psychological analysis, revealing their characters in action and dialogue. Valerie Larbo characterizes Asuela’s manner as follows: “The writer does not evaluate the actions of the characters, does not penetrate their essence, never says what they think and what we should think about them. His main goal is to give us the opportunity to see them as they are. ” Asuela began his career by exposing political and social vices, but at the end of his days the writer came to the negation of all aspects of life, to a pessimistic view of the world as a whole ^[7] .

One of Asuela’s first novels is The Weeds ( Spanish: Mala yerba ), published in 1909, a year before the revolution. This novel is based on the confrontation of the landowner Julian Andrade and the peasant Hertrudis, in love with the same girl. Their struggle ends in a duel. For the first time in Mexican novel, the fate of the peasantry is depicted with sympathy and sympathy for the first time in a Mexican novel ^[8] .

In 1915, Asuela wrote the novel "Those Below." The protagonist of this work is the leader of the peasant rebel detachment Demetrio Macias. The novel consists of three parts, the first of which tells about the reasons for the heroes to join the revolution, the second part reflects political manipulations that led to the separation of revolutionary forces, as well as the senseless cruelty and looting accompanying military clashes. The last part describes the death of the remains of the Demetrio squad. Unable to stop the violence surrounding him, Demetrio answers his wife’s question about why he continues the war by throwing a stone into the canyon and saying the phrase: “Look at this stone - it continues to roll” ( Spanish: Mira esa piedra como ya no se para ) ^[9] . The novel reflects, on the one hand, the courage of the peasantry and its self-sacrifice, and on the other, its spiritual squalor and barbaric cruelty. There is almost no description of the scene in the book. There is almost no static scene or dialogue in the novel. All this enhances the dynamism of the novel. The intelligentsia is portrayed negatively. One of the heroes - a medical student who joined the partisans - Luis Cervantes - makes high-flown speeches about the revolution, but meanwhile picks up jewelry in the looted houses and leaves the squad when danger is approaching ^[10] .

In the mid-20s. Asuela changes her realistic style to an attempt to portray heroes from the inside using modern means. His three roms - “The Villain” ( Spanish: La malhora , 1923), “Retribution” ( Spanish - El desquite , 1925), “Little Squid” ( Spanish - La luciernaga , 1926-1932) - are written in criticism. "Hermetic" or " extremeist ". The heroes of these books are somewhat removed from social conflicts, and the main emphasis is placed on their inner world, not without some soreness. The profession of a doctor practicing in one of the poor neighborhoods confronted Asuela with people at the time of physical and moral suffering: alcoholics, schizophrenics, prostitutes, people with a crippled psyche - life appears in these novels as meaningless chaos. Only in “Firefly” does the heroine appear, in the words of V. N. Kuteishchikova , “carrying the light of goodness and mercy”. In the same novel, anti-urban tendencies appear in Asuela's literature - a cruel city absorbs and destroys naive provincials ^[12] .

“Firefly” attracted the attention of critics, comparable to the interest in “Those below,” but he left indifferent the broad masses of readers. Therefore, Asuela, considering himself a folk writer, returned to a realistic depiction of life. The novel "Comrade Pantocha" ( Spanish: El camarada Pantoja , 1937) describes the decomposition of the lower layer of the bureaucracy - immigrants from the proletariat. The protagonist gives refuge to one of the generals of the Obregon-Calles regime , for which he receives a reward for a position in the police, becoming subsequently a member of parliament and interim governor of Zacatecas . Moreover, Pantokha is capable of power for any crime, even murder ^[13] .

A sense of disappointment with the results of the revolution prevented Asuela from endowing her characters with persuasiveness, excluding from his attention the complexity of political and moral problems. The characters in the novel are like puppets. This gave rise to the accusation of the writer of reactionism and desecration. In response to these reproaches, Asuela noted that “the truth has thousands of facets, and one person can barely translate at least what he sees in front of him. Thus, I didn’t even want to represent half the truth, but only a small part of it with the greatest honesty and reliability ” ^[14] .

In the novel "San Gabriel de Valdivias" ( Spanish: San Gabriel de Valdivias , 1938) Asuela for the first and last time addresses the problem of the Indians. However, the writer does not see the difference between the exploitation of the Indians by the landowners and their oppression by the new authorities ^[14] .

The main character of the novel Rehina Landa ( Spanish: Regina Landa , 1939) is the daughter of a general who, after his death, finds herself in the thick of the senseless and vulgar bustle of the regime of the new president Lazaro Cardenas . It is noteworthy that now the criticism referred to the period in the history of Mexico, known for progressive changes. As an even more miserable and ugly world, Asuela describes the meeting of a group of communists - artists and writers - which Rehin visits. According to Louis Leahl , the novel “reflected not only Asuela’s misunderstanding of certain social and political problems, but also many of his prejudices” ^[15] .

A characteristic feature of Asuela's novels of the 40s. becomes the writer's increasing hatred of the existing system. A similar attitude is reflected in the novel The Frontline ( Spanish Avanzada , 1940), one of which is the conflict between the illiterate mass of workers and trade union demagogues corrupt by Cardenas. The heroes of another novel of this period - the New Bourgeoisie ( Spanish: Nueva burgesia, 1941 ) - become residents of an apartment building in Mexico City. Unlike previous Asuela’s novels, there is no depiction of social events, nor criticism of the existing order. The inhabitants of the house have no interests other than material, they are equally insignificant or unhappy ^[16] .

During this decade, Asuela wrote five more novels, two of which were published after his death. In the posthumous novel The Curse, anti-urban views of Asuela, describing the vices of metropolitan society, were again found. However, rural life is described just as gloomy here. Asuela’s last novel “The Same Blood” became a kind of ending to his work - his action takes place in the same place as in the first novel of the writer “Buryan”. The landowner Andrade here appears as a revolution-ravaged old man, a symbol of the triumph of historical justice. However, representatives of the post-revolutionary bourgeoisie take its place ^[17] .

Novels

• María Luisa ( 1907 ), Maria Luisa.
• Los fracasados ( 1908 ), The Vanquished.
• Los triunfadores ( 1909 ), Winners.
• Mala yerba ( 1909 ), Buryan.
• La rueda del aire ( 1908 ), Wheels from the air.
• Andrés Pérez, maderista ( 1911 ), Andrés Pérez - Madeira.
• Los de abajo ( 1915 ), Those below.
• Los caciques ( 1917 ), Kasiki.
• Las moscas ( 1918 ), Flies.
• Las tribulaciones de una familia decente (1918), Adversity in a worthy family.
• La malhora ( 1923 ), Villain.
• El desquite ( 1925 ), Retribution.
• La luciérnaga ( 1932 ), Firefly.
• El camarada Pantoja ( 1937 ), Comrade Pantoja.
• San Gabriel de Valdivias ( 1938 ), San Gabriel de Valdivias.
• Regina Landa ( 1939 ), Rehina Landa.
• Nueva burgesia ( 1941 ), The New Bourgeoisie.
• Sendas perdidas ( 1949 ), Lost Paths.
• La maldición ( 1955 ), The Curse (posthumous).
• Esa sangre ( 1956 ), The same blood (posthumous).

Essays

• Cien años de novela mexicana ( 1947 ), One Hundred Years of a Mexican Novel.

• Vinnichenko I.V. Mariano Asuela: Mexican Revolution and the Literary Process. - M .: Science, 1972.
• History of Latin American Literature. - M .: Heritage, 1994 .-- T. 3.
• Kuteishchikova V. N. Mexican novel: formation, originality, modern stage. - M .: Science, 1971.

• Asuela, Mariano // Encyclopedia " Around the World ."