Svět Literatury (Dec 2016)
El guatemalteco parisiense Enrique Gómez Carrillo // Enrique Gómez Carrillo, the Parisian from Guatemala
Abstract
Gómez Carrillo represents the period of the Hispanoamerican literature called modernism, that means the turn of the 20th century. He spent almost all his life out of Guatemala, especially in France and Spain, falling in love with the French capital, the symbol of everything new, shocking, and rare. He wrote a vast literary work, especially journalistic articles and chronicles (mainly from his travels to Europe and exotic countries), and also short novels Tres novelas inmorales / Three immoral novels, on which this article focuses. We consider them as an interesting portrait of the era called fin de siècle; under their provocative and indecent surface there are hidden the basic artistic questions of the moment: What is the value of art? Which role is the artist supposed to play in the modern world? And what distance is there between real love and mere lust?
