DE LA REGIÓN EN EL EPISTOLARIO Y LA OBRA CRíTICA DE TOMÁS CARRASQUILLA

Abstract

The work of Colombian writer Tomás Carrasquilla evidences the

authenticity of a narrator who, in the process of cultural evolution of Colombian

and Latin American literature, establishes a historical framework: in his quest for

self-expression, he turned his vision to America, particularly to the characters

and situations of the people of Antioquia, his home province. His writing also

becomes the first to offer a broad array of historical and fictional literary worlds,

expanded and elaborated by later generation of well-known authors such as

German Espinosa, Gabriel García Márquez and Álvaro Mutis who, in their

unique styles, were able to turn the complex cultural sides of Colombian

society into something more universal and widely recognizable.

But the work of Tomás Carrasquilla is not only confined to his fictional world. In

fact, through the letters (epistles) and various critical essays published by the

writer in magazines and newspapers at the time, he reveals a tension that

allows us to understand a unique and very personal aesthetic outlook where

local or regional elements do not suffice as literary qualifier or leitmotif.

The letters and the critical essays allow us to trace the clear and coherent vision

between his theories and the assumption of a writing style that we dont find in

any other author until the mid-twentieth century. The tension generated by the

political period known as Regeneration and the position taken by centralists

that the countrys capital (Bogotá) should be the center of administrative power

as well as that of aesthetic ideas are, in part, the basis for Tomás Carrasquillas

refreshing attitude. This article focuses on the revelation of his artistic principles and also on some intricacies of the said regenerative project, essential to

understanding the work and life of the author.