Roberto Bolañoviaje y literatura

Résumé

The thesis aims to comprehensively analyze one of the fundamental ideas that are interconnected in both the life and literature of Roberto Bolaño. This idea is the concept of the journey, a generic notion that can only be approached by examining the various forms it takes in his literature, whether more or less concrete or more or less poetic. These forms include exile, nomadism, escape, memory as a journey, and literature as a journey, among others. Bolaño, an indefatigable traveler, depicted his concrete travel experiences throughout his literature and constructed a poetics of the journey that can be recognized as heir to a foundational tradition in both European and American literature in its broadest sense. Therefore, this thesis seeks to conduct an in-depth analysis of one of the main thematic aspects of Bolaño's literature, namely, the journey, which has only been superficially explored by critics. This is partly to provide answers and partly to open up new perspectives for critical studies of the Chilean author's work. Furthermore, it aims to establish a comparative, critical, and detailed analysis of influences from earlier authors. This analysis serves to clarify Bolaño's relationship with these authors and their literary movements, as well as the relationships between these earlier authors themselves, regarding the historical continuity and renewal of a poetics of the journey, which I consider central to Bolaño's novels, poetry, and essays, and which also significantly shaped his life trajectory. Bolaño's work is characterized by its fragmentary and kaleidoscopic nature, to which the methodology of this thesis has tried to adapt in pursuit of a comprehensive critique of a motif as general as that of the journey. Thus, this fragmentary character is reflected in the analysis of a series of influences, forms, and approaches that make up the theme of the journey. These elements succeed each other without apparent continuity, but when viewed as a whole, they provide the most comprehensive possible view of the analyzed theme, one that does not hide its shifts and contradictions within the Chilean author's body of work. From each of the resulting sections of the research, a series of specific conclusions have been drawn. When studied together, these conclusions clarify and help shape the concept of the journey that Bolaño employs, as well as demonstrate the profound significance of this concept in his literature as a central motif, two of the fundamental objectives of this research. Furthermore, from the sum of these specific conclusions, the following general conclusion emerges: the motif of the journey is present as an aesthetic pillar throughout Bolaño's literature, from his youth to his maturity. It is a broad, hyperonymous concept, influenced by previous literature and indebted to it. This motif has both an immediate or biographical aspect and a more symbolic and poetic one (the existential journey, life as a journey). At the root of every Bolañesque journey, we find ideas such as contradiction, disappearance, or the annulment of absolute certainties, reflecting the existential state of rootlessness experienced by the travelers.