by Bartolomé
Mitre (1821-1906)
Prologue
From the wording of the time
We begin
today to publish in our daily serial novel that we wrote in the little leisure
time that drafting of a newspaper allows, and we offer it to the public as the
first test we do in a genre of literature as difficult as little cultivated
among us.
South
America is the world regions poorest of original novelists. If we tried to
investigate the causes of this poverty, we would say that it seems that the
novel is the highest expression of people civilization, like those fruits that
arises only when the tree is in the fullness of its development.
The lyrical
or dithyrambic literary genres are for people the first articulate sounds are
for children. The imagination of primitive men draws inspirations from the
torrent noise, the rustling of the leaves, birds singing, the sun, moon, stars,
in a word, from sound, light, and movement [II] that animates the universe and
that hurts our senses as a great hymn that nature sings to its creator.
The
narrative comes only in a second age. Only then the poet use descriptions, and
chroniclers and historians appear. The simple elements, of which society is
composed, still can be depicted in this way, still can be explained and
reflected as a whole with this genre.
When
society is completed, civilization develops, the intellectual sphere widens
then, and it is essential that a new form that brings together the various
elements that make up people's lives when they reach a state of maturity. First
comes the drama, and the novel comes later. The first is life in action; the
second one is also life in action but explained and analyzed, life subjected to
logic. It is a faithful mirror in which people contemplates as themselves, with
their vices and such a sight, usually awakens deep meditation or teaches healthy
lessons.
There is no
shortage, among us, of severe spirits that consider novels a waywardness of imagination,
fictions unworthy to occupy the attention of thinking men. But we will ask
them:
Aren´t novels the major works humanity is proud of? What are The Iliad and The Aeneid, but novels in verse? What are the Quixote and Gil Blas? What have Rabelais Rabelais, Rousseau, Cervantes, Richardson, Walter Scott , Cooper, Bulwer, Dickens, written but novels? Is not their work the first in literature? Don´t their names shine among the first geniuses? Well, the first are novels, and second, novelists. Who will despise one or the other?
Aren´t novels the major works humanity is proud of? What are The Iliad and The Aeneid, but novels in verse? What are the Quixote and Gil Blas? What have Rabelais Rabelais, Rousseau, Cervantes, Richardson, Walter Scott , Cooper, Bulwer, Dickens, written but novels? Is not their work the first in literature? Don´t their names shine among the first geniuses? Well, the first are novels, and second, novelists. Who will despise one or the other?
Otherwise
we agree that this genre has been mismanaged and degraded, so, it could have inspired
boredom, but this is the product of lost and wanderings imagination that should
not be attributed to the genre itself. Alongside those thousands of novels that
dishonor literature, we have the great works of geniuses to bring honor it.
That is why
we want the novel to sink deep roots in the virgin soil of America. The people
ignore their history, their customs recently formed have not been
philosophically studied, and the ideas and feelings modified by political and
social ways have not been presented in vivacious and animated forms, as copied directly
from the society in which we live. The novel would popularize our history making
use of the events of the conquest, the colonial period, and the memories of the
war of independence. As Cooper in his
Puritan and the Mouse did, novel
would paint the original and unfamiliar customs of the various peoples of this
continent, who are so prone to be poetic, and it would our societies be known as they have been deeply shaken by
misfortune, with so many great virtues and vices, being interpreted also in the time of
transformation, when the chrysalis becomes a bright butterfly. All this would
make the novel, and it s the only form in which these various paintings can be
presented as full of rich colors and movement.
What has
been stated above is in regard to the novel in general and to South America in
particular. Now we will say a few words about our novel, which is like dealing
with a grain of sand after talking to the sea.
Soledad is a faint try that has no other
object but encourage young capabilities to explore the rich mine of the
American novel. Its action is very simple, and its characters are copied from
american society in general. Barely the author could explain the moral idea
that has been proposed, but if it is conceded that at the bottom of his work is
any truth, it is also clear that there will be morale. He has wanted to rely more
on the interplay of passions than in the multiplicity of events, always putting
moral man above the physiological man. This was the main idea that guided him
in his composition. His characters feel and think, rather than act. So the
heroine is a woman who has a heart and feels and thinks; she has an
intelligence that seeks happiness in life, she is weak as sometimes women are,
her imagination sometimes goes astray as a human creature that she is. This is
our story, and such is our heroine.
By placing
the scene in Bolivia, the author wants to make a public demonstration of his
gratitude to this country which has welcomed him and where he has found some
days of peace, exiled as he is from the place of his birth. [1 ]
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