Eva Luna: Writing as History

The Bildungsroman of Eva Luna's development as a writer reflects—in a somewhat fragmented manner—important developments in Latin American literary history. Her personal quest was paralleled by an aesthetic quest, manifested in the trying on and taking off of various genres, literary movements and myths characteristic of Latin America; she even goes so far as to allude explicitly to specific authors and their individual works. Although some of these are simply lightheartedly parodied, others are reworked and reinterpreted in the light of the feminist enterprise of the past twenty-five years. Eva Luna transgresses fundamentally by having an intellectually strong, sexual, nurturing, very feminine protagonist, setting up an initial rupture with the dichotomy so clearly demarcated by Octavio Paz between "the mother and the whore." Four primary categories suggest themselves: myth and the mythic consciousness; magical realism; Boom writers; and then a miscellaneous grouping that subsumes a host of other significant literatures and literary themes: the picaresque, the neo-romantic, novels of the dictators, the ever-present conflict between civilization and barbarism, and testimonial literature. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 Eva Luna: Writing as History Lynne Diamond-Nigh Elmira College In the beginning was the Word. And in the end. The opening lines of Isabel Allende's Eva Luna (1989) place us squarely in a world created and structured by the written word: "My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted" (1). Indeed, the entire first chapter of that novel functions to displace our center of reference from the real world to the world of the Book where the life of the imagination is privileged. The epigraph to Allende's work comes from the paradigmatic Arabian Nights, in which Scheherezade's story-telling keeps her from a certain and undeserved death, setting up a primary theme of salvation through fabulation. Fabulation is here redemption of the collective, for Scheherezade's fables save not only herself but all women, thus putting an end, by nonviolent means, to the death sentence enacted upon the harem/population. The importance of this becomes more evident when we reflect upon the novel and the cultural context from which Isabel Allende writes. The lack of connection between writing and political activism has been one of the major charges levelled at the self-reflexive literature characteristic of the Boom that immediately preceded Allende's work. Although her literature is not innovative in the formal way that high modern Boom literature was, she very clearly believes in the revolutionary possibilities of literature to create and remake life and the impossibility of an authentic literature that is not intimately connected with reality. In Eva Luna and in The House of the Spirits (1985) as well, she shows that writing has a sacred, transcendental quality, which is explored in the creation and resurrection myths and stories that appear in those novels. Eva describes her mother and the legacy she passes on: 1 Diamond-Nigh: Eva Luna: Writing as History Published by New Prairie Press 30 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995) Words are free, she used to say, and she appropriated them; they were all hers. She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying. (22) Allende' s language here reflects the commodification/impoverishment of reality in a world ruled by economic and political repression as a counterpoint to one lightened by the liberating potential of words. But if instead fiction is not integrated into reality, the opposite occurs, as with Zulema, Riad Halabi's wife: "My stories did not make her happy; they merely filled her head with romantic ideas, and led her to dream of impossible escapades and borrowed heroes, distancing her totally from reality" (155). Eva tells the Minister of Defense that her ideas come from "things that are happening and things that happened before I was born . . . " (301). What she doesn't say is that Bolero, her telenovela, which he is questioning, is the story of her (made) life. Clearly, then, because fiction is so intimately entwined with life, it is a priori political. Rolf Carle, the documentary cineaste, and his mentor and boss, Senor Aravena, debate this concept numerous times in the book, even though they genuinely agree that art can change history; it is for that reason that they run the risk of arrest, torture, and even death. At the very end of the book Rolf and Eva merge the personal and the political when they agree to tell the story of the guerrillas' escape from Santa Maria through an episode in her telenovela, a story in which they both had participated and which Rolf had filmed. This device, quite common in Chile and other similar political regimes, ensures the diffusion of the truth that censors will not allow on the regular news channels. Writing as Literary History This Bildungsroman of Eva's professional development as a writer reflects-in a somewhat fragmented manner-important developments in Latin American literary history. While reading this novel I felt that her personal quest was paralleled by an aesthetic quest, manifested in the trying on and taking off of various genres, literary movements and myths characteristic of Latin America; she even goes so far as to explicitly allude to specific authors and their individual works. Although some of these are simply lightheartedly parodied, 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 4 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/4 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1360