Góngora - The only American culture is the culture of resentment
An interview with the historian Mario Góngora
The only American culture is the culture of resentment.
An interview with the historian Mario Góngora1
“There is a general consensus that Mario Góngora is the greatest historian of his generation, and he is certainly one of the most well-respected Latin-American historians of the last few decades,” writes British historian Simon Collier2. Beyond his professional historical work3, Góngora (1915-1985) was a profound traditionalist and Spenglerian thinker, a fact to which his works A historical essay on the idea of the State in Chile in the 19th and 20th centuries (1982) and the articles collected in Mass Civilization and Hope (1987) give testimony.4
Herder, Spengler, and, I think, Toynbee as well, see in the great pre-Columbian cultures a very exceptional case of cultures which were violently interrupted while being very much alive. Nevertheless, they do not speak about what happened after the conquest, about whether there was a kind of transfusion or whether they definitely died.
Well, with the knowledge that we have about the pre-Columbian cultures, it is not easy to say in which cultural stage they were in the moment of the conquest. In the case of the Persian Empire or the Roman Empire, we can say that they were in the last stages of their culture; there was an organized empire. Perhaps the Incan Empire was also in the last stage, but in the case of the other cultures there was no final unification. We would need more information to know to what degree they were still alive.
Now, why don’t the morphologists of European culture speak about the previous period - this would address the whole problem we are speaking about, wouldn’t it?
Europeans find the Americas as a New World, but for them, this new world is opposite to the Western mind, so they cut, and decapitate the old high cultures, and only Indigenous communities remain. They attempt to colonize, or rather, transfer European cultural forms to Hispanic America. In this transfer, Western culture is preserved, but only in the weakened form that we tend to call colonial. In consequence, no new culture is born here – this is, it seems to me, what should be recognized; there is no new culture with its own primordial symbols.
The existing culture is an extension of Western culture. It is weakened in the sense that in this colonial world, the internal dialectic of European culture is not lived integrally; rather, its results are received. From the whole process which Europe goes through, from the 16th century – its Renaissance, its Reformation, its Baroque, its religious conflicts, its cultural achievements, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, etc. etc., up till now, it would seem that Spanish America (I don’t know about English America; let us speak about Spanish America, which I know better) successively receives products already made, but does not live internally the dialectical element from which these products emerge.
At first, these results were received through Spain; afterwards, literary, artistic, political products came through French influence, which is the case of the Encyclopedia and of the 19th century; towards 1930, 1940, comes an invasion of the global civilization of the masses, which in the beginning was attributed to North America, but which, in reality, Europe is also included. This is a massive, international civilization. This, then, makes the existence of a truly American culture difficult. This international world which we are living through suffocates, so to speak, almost any possibility of national culture.
How were these products of Europe received? Did they provoke any debate? How well assimilated were these ideas?
Well, there are different levels of reception; some are superficial and others are more profound on the American side. In the political field, in the time of Independence, there was an attempt to integrate European-style liberal democracy, which triumphed after the French Revolution, in all Hispano-American strata. Nevertheless, behind the liberal façade, in the real Hispanoamerican political line, old liberalisms and conservatisms appear which are irreconcilable for a liberal European. For example, there appears caudillismo, a phenomenon which is so peculiar, so proper to Hispanic America, and which is more primitive than the caudillismo which existed in Spain, so that the liberal-democratic form is a façade behind which there is a political vein which is different, something unto itself.
In philosophy, men like Andrés Bello attempted a more serious assimilation, on a deeper level, of several European philosophical schools. In Chile, a poet like Vicente Huidobro was closer to the French poetry movement of 1914-1930.
So there are different degrees of reception, which are more or less deep; but as to whether one could see in that a distinct American culture, that is another question.
Is there any attempt at defining what is proper to America and moving towards it? Is there any degree of acceptance of oneself amongst Americans?
The problem is that no-one knows. After the death of the indigenous cultures, there is no clear cultural consciousness. The national states have managed to create a certain political consciousness; there is Chile, there is Argentina, Brazil; a politico-territorial consciousness has been created, that much is true.
But cultural consciousness… well, there are different levels, differing levels of cultural consciousness. For some, this consists simply being up to date with everything that is being produced in Europe and the United States. For others, cultural consciousness would have to be the revival of the same thoughts that are being had in Europe, in its own dialectic, in all its inner movement, to try that. But a cultural consciousness, as they say in Europe… The European feels European, in Europe or outside of Europe. I do not see that a Hispanic-American or Portuguese-American would be aware of what he is.
Is it indispensable to have cultural consciousness for a culture to exist in another, intuitive way?
Of course, but then we cannot speak of it yet; it may exist. There are more archaic stages of a culture, which are hidden beneath the prestige of previous cultural forms. Europe herself in her beginning felt herself part of the Roman Empire at the start of the Middle Ages; she had not yet become aware of being Europe. Therein lies the unforeseeable; it’s thus possible that we have been in a unconscious stage.
Maybe it is not so unforeseeable. Do you think that in the colonial era there was any element that was unaware in that moment, that, seen from our current point of view, gives it a certain character of cultural originality?
Europeans first thought they had found India. Columbus thought he had arrived in the East; he was expecting Jerusalem. The missionaries of the 16th century thought there might be another Christendom. Afterwards, the North Americans proclaimed that civilization was moving from Europe to the Americas. So the idea of the new, of the opposite, is what I would say were the most original things that some parts of the colonial world had. But being something new, on its own, without being determined, without its contents being shapes… the new is simply always in opposition to the old, although this does not imply in itself formally different content. On the other hand, the Europeans are the ones who called this the New World, it was the Europeans who discovered here the opposition to their own European world and it is for this reason that they travelled; it was exotic, leaving Europe, finding possibilities that they didn’t have there. But we can’t call this a new culture.
Cultural morphologists say that European culture is defined by having infinite space as its primary symbol. Here in America, the men who look for America as something new, simply look for something which is not subject to the same European cultural forms, that which is free in the political, religious sense, etc. But in this case there is no ONE symbol that can be defined. Even though the character of the new world has been more or less original, that is not enough to say that it constitutes a culture; at least that is how it seems to me.
Where do we find the first generation that feels American? In the colonial period itself? In the generation the leads the emancipation?
It seems that in the 18th century there was a clear awareness of being “different”, but still not of being “nations”.
On what basis?
They see nature as something new. But they are motivated more by… resentment. Or rather, by demonstration that the Criollo world, the American world, is not inferior to the European world and that it is enough to be educated, cultured, or politically free to be the same as a European. More than a revelation of something new emerging, there was resentment. In the 18th century, the Jesuits expelled, all that literature, the North Americans in the style of Jefferson, etc…, are more an opposition to the world, or an eagerness to be equal to that world. At its base it is more a resentment than the affirmation of a new vision.
Currently in Chile, there is a great insistence on looking for the origins of the people, and it is sought in the “aborigine”, much importance is given to the Araucan, Diaguite root… in the end, is this not, then, new? or is it still just resentment?
In part, every human group seeks its origins, this is something constant, general; in this sense it is not resentment, it is a recognition of ones own roots, which would be authentic, but tends to get mixed with resentment. I always think of the case of the Jesuits, a Clavijero, for example, and his double motivation - resentment on the one hand (they have always been expelled, dissolved by the pope) and in part this historical constant, the acknowledgement of ones forebears, which is positive and worthwhile.
In this sense the admiration for French culture could fundamentally be considered to be in opposition to Spanish culture, in some way as a reflection of that resentment.
Certainly, it may well be the case, because I doubt that admirers of France have really lived French culture in its inner dialectic. They feel inspired, for example, by Victor Hugo, who in the 19th century had great poetic prestige, but they don’t know that behind Victor Hugo there is German Romanticism. It’s a curious fact that there has been no true Romanticism in the Americas. Because Romanticism is too much an appeal to a primitive Germanism, it was not in accord with the other great eagerness of the Americans of the 19th century for political freedom; instead, the French Romanticists are of a liberal, social type. They see in them, then, the counterposition to Spanish dominion.
On the other hand it also seems to be the case that Spain does not communicate with America either; I don’t think that Hispanic America experienced the Spanish Golden Age. Or rather, there is no sublime Spanish cultural foundation either. Cervantes, Calderón, there are many who have not been experienced in the Americas, whose inner dramas of Life is a Dream or the Cervantine character have not been truly lived. Spain, when it was culturally creative, didn’t give us this either.
Do you think that a sense of unease, of a certain frustration that seems have existed in Spanish culture after that period is being transferred to the Americas?
If one has not lived through the Golden Age, one cannot live through its fall. I think that Garcilaso, Fray Luis de León, Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz, Góngora (well, they say that there were imitations of Góngora’s poetry amongst certain colonial writers, right?), but anyway, in the end, I do not think that the process of the Golden Age was really lived. In consequence, the collapse of Spain, which Quevedo feels, for example, as far as I know, was not experienced.
It was only colonial reality that was experienced - the Spanish administration, the official Catholic piety; the crisis went unseen. The crisis was felt in the 18th century, in the period of the Enlightenment; that is when Spain stopped being a teacher, and became a student of the rest of Europe; that did have repercussions in the Americas.
But the great Spanish culture, which could be said to be agonizing in 1650 – I think it was not really experienced. Regarding the French question, well, that would be an attempt to drink from modern culture; in those differing levels of reception of which we spoke, eagerness for modernity seems the liveliest; precisely because it was a new world, they thought they could live modernity better, better than Spain. So they find France.
If the Golden Age did not cross over to America, what was happening in the Americas at that time, what were they aware of?
First, there was the religious element, which would be a whole problem of its own worth thinking about. There was a Catholic consciousness, in the Hispanic way, wasn’t there? There was deep, popular devotion and total leadership by the clergy, but no personal religious experiences. But there existed therein something which is capital in Hispanic America - Catholicism - from which I apprehend two fundamental traits: a deep emotional devotion, an unbreakable decision of surrender to, and, on the other hand, domination by the clergy, the belief that the decisive factor in the Church is the unconditional obedience to the clergy: this is clearly seen today, the priest changes his direction, his political position, but it is understood that he cannot be disobeyed. That is important.
Second, there is what people read. From what one sees in the libraries, people read quite a lot of books about chivalry, which feed the imagination, but there are no great novels. Quijote, for example, is unknown; there is only one library, the Lisperguers’ one, which has him. There are lists of inventories of libraries gathered by other people, by me, etc… There are fundamentally texts about chivalry; there is St. Thomas, St. Theresa, some Picaresque novels, some Spanish history of the 16th century, devotional literature. That is in the private libraries; there are also professional libraries, of Law and Theology.
We will ask you a question which you answered in part. Is every debate in the Americas basically about European ideas? Or is there not even any debate?
Well, there was the famous debate towards the end of the 18th century, which Gerbi5, a recent Italian historian called the “Dispute of the New World”; which was fundamentally concerned with a defence of the Americas with regards to the reductive image of them that exists in Europe. It was said, for example, that the Americas made species degenerate. So the expelled Jesuits came out in defence of the Americans, along with an infinitude of writers towards the end of the 18th century. This defence against Europe, is, as we have already said, in part polemical, in part motivated by resentment, and in part by patriotic acknowledgement.
That was the great debate at that time. Throughout the 19th and 20th century, the debate has been incessant as to whether America is or is not, if it had or had not. There came a series of great thinkers - there is Bello, taking up, at the highest possible level, European philosophy, and at a more professional level, law. There is Sarmiento, who acknowledged that America is America, is barbaric, etc… but proposed a model of civilization like that of the United States, not of Europe (that would be a different, Americanist, position). There is Vasconcelos, in Mexico, who thought that America could receive influence not just from European culture, but also from India, from the East.
The debate is prolonged incessantly, always trying to affirm that America is different, but I think that precisely this demonstrates resentment. Instead of living without comparing, they compare.
It seems that in the field of political creation, America gets closest to its own path.
The political has been the fundamental experience of Hispanic Americans since 1810. Let us say that, from the moment in which they have their own aim, they begin to be their own people, personalities; caudillos start to emerge. A climate a little bit like the Far East begins to emerge: the caudillo gives everything, changes positions, awakens admiration; when he falls, he falls victim to the wildest hatred. There is a very strong “Machiavellianism” in the Americas. Politics comes to be that which is most alive, with these caudillesque personalities, who dominate the art of politics, with all their wiles, they have a “cultural” originality, without putting forward any doctrine (but this is also something American, isn’t it?). This caudillismo has carried on into the 20th century with civilian caudillos, like the old Allesandri; anyway, caudillos vary; some are more rustic, like Rosas; others are more civilized, handling the economy, technology.
But look, more than a culture, all this is how political life is on the frontier. It is as if on the frontiers of the West this arises again strongly, as it has from Bolivar until today.
To what is owed the general American admiration for certain figures such as Bolivar and San Martin?
I don’t think there are any others - I mean Bolivar more than anything; San Martin is an Argentine phenomenon. Bolivar served as a symbol, as an opposition to North-Americanism.
Do you think that Europe conserves its own culture, or is it submerged in this “global civilization of the masses”?
Of course, it still conserves something, but obviously it is in retreat before globalization. At the beginning it was felt just as “Americanization”, but it is already emerging as a massive, global culture, in which European – Italian, for example – forms participate, but on a global scale.
On the level of peoples, perhaps… one can still speak of “the English people”, but they are disappearing.
La Ciudad de los Césares 46
The interview was conducted by Hombre y Universo, a student journal of culture from the Pontifical University of Chile in June, 1982, and reproduced by the journal Noreste in June 1990 (Beltrán Mena, director of this publication, was also the director of the former). This interview was neither collected nor mentioned in Mass Civilization and Hope (Civilización de Masas y Esperanza). It is therefore of additional interest – that is, beyond its content – that we present it in CC according to the text in Noreste.
The Hispanic American Historical Review, v. 63, No. 4, November 1983
Such as The State in the Laws of the Indies, 1951; The Origin of the ‘inquilinos’ of Central Chile, 1960, 1974; Encomenderos and Ranchers, 1970, etc.
See the review of this work in CC 2 (July-August 1988), and, in general, “Nationalism, traditionalism, conservatism”, (CC 31, July-October, 1993).
Trans. note: Antonello Gerbi (1904-1976) was an Italian historian and economist. Most of his work has not been translated into English.