MAGICAL REALISM IN ART AND LITERATURE

•

“The Burning Giraffe” by Salvador Dali

“The Burning Giraffe” is an example of surrealism…

• Surrealism is an early 20th-century movement in art and literature that tried to represent the subconscious mind by creating fantastic, dream-like imagery and juxtaposing ideas that seem to contradict each other. • Salvador Dali is a Spanish painter/sculptor whose work came to define this movement.

“Empire of Light” by Rene Magritte

“Empire of Light” is an example of

magical realism…

Magical Realism is an artistic movment which combines elements of the real/ordinary with elements of the fantastic or magical. Rene Magritte, though first considered a surrealist, has come to typify magical realist painting because he juxtaposes realistic images or scenes with unreal or fantastic images.

The term “magical realism”…

…was first coined by art historian Franz Roh in 1925, to describe an artistic movement emerging in Europe. This movement was also called “New Objectivity” because its artists chose to represent “real” or ordinary objects in a “new” or “magical” way.

Magritte and Dali

More Rene Magritte…

Magical Realism as a Literary Movement

• Magical Realism as an artistic movement, originating in the 1920’s, eventually traveled from Europe to Central and South America in the 1930’s and 1940’s. • Magical Realism did not become a literary movement until it arrived in Latin America (Mexico, Central and South America, the Carribean). There, it was claimed by such authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia), Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina).

Qualities of Magical Realist Literature:

• Reality-based fiction • NOT fantasy, horror, science-fiction, fairytales, legend or folklore • Fantastic events are considered normal by the characters • No need to justify unreal elements or why fantastic events occur • Makes ordinary objects seem extraordinary • Suggests a certain “timelessness” - stories not limited to a certain time period • Reveals the mysterious or magical side of the ordinary • Uses Hyperbole, or exaggeration, to emphasize the extraordinary

Examples of Magical Realism in Literature

Hyperbole (exaggeration)

From Clarice Lispector’s “The Smallest Woman in the World” “In the Eastern Congo, near Lake Kivu, he really did discover the smallest pygmies in the world. And—like a box within a box within a box—obedient perhaps, to the necessity nature sometimes feels of outdoing herself—among the smallest pygmies in the world there was the smallest of the smallest pygmies in the world. Among mosquitoes and lukewarm trees, among leaves of the most rich and lazy green, Marcel Pretre found himself facing a woman seventeen and three-quarter inches high, full-grown, black, silent—who lived in a treetop with her little spouse.”

Makes the ordinary seem extraordinary

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano describes just such a moment: “It is noon and James Baldwin is walking with a friend through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A red light stops them. ‘Look,’ says the friend, pointing at the ground. Baldwin looks. He sees nothing. ‘Look, look.’ Nothing. There is nothing to look at but a filthy little puddle of water against the curb. His friend insists: ‘See? Are you seeing?’ And then Baldwin takes a good look and this time he sees, sees a spot of oil spreading in the puddle. Then, in the spot of oil, a rainbow, and even deeper down in the puddle, the street moving, and people moving in the street: the shipwrecked, the madmen, the magicians, the whole world moving, an astounding world full of worlds that glow in the world. Baldwin sees. For the first time in his life, he sees.”

Magical events are described as if they are ordinary, and characters in the story react to them as ordinary From Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” “On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been a sad thing since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish.

The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.”

To Review: Qualities of Magical Realist Literature: • Reality-based fiction • NOT fantasy, horror, science-fiction, fairytales, legend or folklore • Fantastic events are considered normal by the characters • No need to justify unreal elements or why fantastic events occur • Makes ordinary objects seem extraordinary • Suggests a certain “timelessness” - stories not limited to a certain time period • Reveals the mysterious or magical side of the ordinary • Hyperbole, or exaggeration, to emphasize the extraordinary