The absolute theatrality in El gaucho insufrible, by Roberto Bolaño

Abstract

In this short story, El gaucho insufrible (2003), Roberto Bolaño rewrites the myth of the Argentine gaucho, drawing a unique parallel between Borges and Cervantes by situating his narrative in an Argentina in crisis. In this unique play between the real and the imaginary, the short story makes Borges appear, on the one hand, as an ethical and literary ideal that the main character believes is the only way to get Argentina back to its roots and, little by little, tries to fit that fragile scenario into the standards of a utopian fictional reality; on the other hand, this staging achieves a quixotic stance by inscribing the literary myth in a space and time to which it seems to have never belonged, making the literary ideal replace the real and become a kind of counter reality that highlights the contradictions of historical progress. Starting from a reading of what Bolívar Echeverría (2005) considers the absolute theatricality of the Baroque in modernity, this analysis of Bolaño’s short story develops an ethical and aesthetic reflection on this emancipated representation which, by radicalizing the act of representing, highlights another reality, an alternative way of understanding political, social and historical processes.