Leaving the world

The Colombian writer Fernando González Ochoa.RR SS

I was preparing this installment of our newsletter, dear reader, when a close and very dear friend reminded me of a great book, which I read a long time ago and which had been lost in the attics of my memory.

The book is called Journey on foot, was published towards the third decade of the twentieth century and its author, Fernando González Ochoa, inaugurated a whole genre – that of the walker who tries to link, through the very personal experience of the trip, from the landscape and the stones to the illusions of the last of the beings with whom he crosses his path and the multiple philosophies of life.

Obviously, before González Ochoa's book there are other similar exercises, but surely not of the dimension, scope and quality of the Colombian's book, which not only systematizes a particular aesthetic of drift, but would become, over time, a model for a certain literature that would germinate throughout the continent —it is important to note, In addition, what González Ochoa did, he did before Robert Walser or W. G. Sebald—: the Nadaist movement of the sixties, for example, was inspired by his figure and his work.

From drift to flight

Near where González Ochoa settled towards the end of his life and where he refined his journey on foot, close, also, to where the Nadaists would have to place their emotional center of operations and close, in addition, to that idea that seems to assert that literature is, above all, a form of exploration of the world only to the extent that this exploration allows or does not allow the writer to inhabit both the world and the world. that own exploration, long after, even after the outbreaks of the boom, would become a writer – what a writer, in addition, as I have said in other installments of this newsletter – Tomás González.

I bring here Tomás González, beyond because he seems to me the most important Colombian writer of his generation, from any aesthetic point of view, beyond, also, because the other González, González Ochoa, was his uncle, and beyond, in addition, because that uncle would seem to inspire not a few of the forms, ideas and flaws of the main character of the first novel of the other González, that is, of Tomás —La historia de Horacio—, because in some way it is Tomás who, while creating literature of the best, gives a bestial twist to the literature of the drift, opening a gap to the literature of the escape: on the horizon, everywhere, the siege of violence had appeared and Tomás González, as it becomes clear when one reads First was the sea or Fog at noon, but especially the stories of the book The King of Honka Monka.

The Path of Leaks

Obviously, literature of flight and flight has also always existed, not only in our continent, but in the rest of the planet, in the rest of traditions and in other languages. But, just as González Ochoa's drift is particular, the escape to which Tomás González gives shape – I insist, the stories of El rey del Honka Monka, in particular the story Verdor, in which a man abandons himself little by little, more to wash away his past than to annihilate his present or his future – is equally particular and it is from that same interest that I pointed out before: that of literature as a way of exploring the world but, suddenly, as a way, also, of abandoning it, of leaving both the world and the exploration itself.

A literature, then, that would seem to suggest that literature, itself, can also be a way of abandoning the world, of course, after having inhabited it, while it can be a way of dismantling the experience itself of both the ways of inhabiting and abandoning. But why did I get here? Why if he didn't want to talk about either of the two Gonzalezes? I already said it, more or less, at the beginning of this newsletter: because while I was preparing to write about Una música, the latest novel by the Argentine writer Hernán Ronsino, a friend reminded me of Viaje a pie, which later made me think of the books of Tomás González.

Ronsino's escape

I do not know if Ronsino has read the novels or the stories of Tomás González, but I know that Una música —a work in which the Argentine gives a twist to his work: suddenly, the echo that beats most strongly is that of the past and not that of the present, suddenly, Di Benedetto, Saer and Piglia are drafts and not guides, suddenly, history is there not only to give rise to the wonders of language and form, but to illuminate each other and fill each other with nuances (Ronsino is a formidable stylist)—it is also the most recent gear of that literature of the fugue of which I discover myself here speaking.

Of course, there are other González Ochoa, Tomás González and Ronsino, in other latitudes of the continent, but the last book on fugues that amazed me, without knowing that it was part of that circle that I did not imagine until now, that is, until my friend pointed out El viaje a pie, was that of the Argentine, whose previous works should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the counterflows of Argentine literature.

As, of course, anyone who wants to know where our literature of escape is going, is obliged to read A Music, in which a pianist leaves everything and travels from the center of his own life and his own history, to the temporal and emotional edges of these, while traveling from the political centers, social and economic of their reality towards the peripheries of it.

He is obliged to read A music, moreover, one who understands that the escape, in literature, is, in addition to the search for a different destination, the search for another way of telling.

And it is that of that, of being trapped in a single way of telling, Ronsino has also known how to escape, in A music.

Coordinates

Una música, by Hernán Ronsino, was published by Eterna Cadencia —a couple of days ago, in fact, it won the Critics' Prize of the El Libro Foundation, during the Buenos Aires International Book Fair— and Sexto Piso. The work of Tomás González has different editions, both in Alfaguara and in Seix Barral. There are also multiple editions of Journey on Foot and can be found, in fact, royalty-free.