Got to Be (Magically) Real

Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas is frequently described as being inspired by the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez. But what does this really mean? The phrase “magical realism” is a broad descriptor of a particular literary or artistic style. First used in 1925 by German art critic Franz Roh to explain post-Expressionist painting, the term has come to be associated largely, though not exclusively, with Latin American and Caribbean writers of the late 20th century. Many of these writers, like the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, were also associated with the so-called “Latin American boom,” which saw novelists and poets from Peru (Mario Vargas Llosa), Argentina (Julio Cortázar), and Mexico (Carlos Fuentes), among others, gain newfound recognition on the literary world stage.  

Important precursors include the Cuban novelist and musicologist Alejo Carpentier, who described his own 1949 novel El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World) as an example of what he dubbed “lo real maravilloso”—“the marvelous real.” Carpentier intended to capture the incomprehensibility of Latin American and Caribbean history, especially its brutal violence, to outsiders. In this sense, “lo real maravilloso” has little to do with myth or fantasy, but instead suggests how the realities of life under and after colonialism are so extreme as to appear unreal to those who have not experienced or witnessed them firsthand.

Magical realism, however, describes a mode of expression that effectively dissolves the distinction between phenomena alternately deemed “real” or “unreal.” Pink rain, shape-shifting spirits, people who transform into butterflies (all which take place in Florencia)—these events, figures, and objects are not understood as separate from everyday reality, or as an intrusion of some supernatural or science-fictional element. They occur in the world of the work without need for any logical explanation. For many writers from Latin America and the Caribbean, magical realism further expresses a political critique of Western colonialism. On the one hand, it attends to discrepant and even contrary historical experiences, those of the oppressed and the oppressor. On the other hand, it also contradicts and subverts Western knowledge systems based exclusively on scientific inquiry and secular reason.

Magical realism, especially in Florencia en el Amazonas, aims to reveal the larger forces that shape and transform the lives of its characters—forces whose mysterious power often cannot be understood by means of detached analysis or rational argument. In so doing, it prompts audiences and listeners to reinterrogate their relationships and experiences and to ponder what seemingly mundane moments in their own lives might be simply deemed magical.