In Jose Martí’s “Our America” the intended audience is South American people. We know he is a political thinker but I feel like his writing style is very unique. I believe this essay is very broad which leaves room for interpretation. Martí believe in the power of ideas and the power to create. There is an obvious negative connotation toward the United States. This essay is extremely poetic, for example, Martí states, “These sons of carpenters who are ashamed that their father was a carpenter! These men born in American who are ashamed of the mother that raised them because she wears an Indian apron, these delinquents who disown their sick mother and leave her alone in her sickbed!” (289). The use of language throughout the entire essay is extremely poetic. Martí makes very bold statements throughout his essay and it is very clear how he feels about America and his political views in Latin America. One quote that stuck out to me was when Martí stated, “Governor, in a new country, means Creator” (290). Now what I got from that is that he is comparing a Governor to God. I feel like that’s a pretty bold comparison. Maybe I am miss interpreting this excerpt but I cannot imagine how powerful a Governor was in the late 1800s. I was also intrigued when Martí said, “In America the natural man has triumphed over the imported book” (290). In other words, Americans get their literary works from all over the world and we thrive off of other people work. It is pretty clear Martí isn’t a fan of Americans. Throughout the entire essay Martí continues to use the statements, “the natural man” and “the real man”. Why? What is the significance of that? Technically aren’t all human beings “natural” and “real”. Again Martí uses the word “create” when he states, “Create is this generation’s password” (294). This is my favorite quote because Martí is really proving the power of literature. He is basically stating that creation, art, is the answer to this generation. The answer society is looking for lies within the power of creation. Art is the key.
Do we just comment on each other's post since there is only two of us?
ReplyDeleteThat seems like the only way to go. Though that doesn't need to be done until Sunday.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's right, Daniel!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteIn your post you wonder what the significance of Martí’s use of the terms “the natural man” and “the real man” could be. In class we discussed how Martí created a notion of the positive pure (Latin) American man, one uninfluenced by the exported ideas and values of Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Sidestepping the issues we raised concerning this prioritization of masculinity, I think it’d be fruitful to examine a bit his championing of “the natural” as a rhetorical device. By placing importance on preserving the natural, Martí ties the corruption of the country’s land at the hands of foreign economic pursuits, something that is visible, tangible, to the corruption of the human body of its people, something a bit more spectral. However, I wonder what problems lie in this rhetoric of national purity and patriarchy, and what differentiates it from similar ideas of nation building that have existed in Europe’s history, which Martí so passionately argues against. He distinguishes his nation’s literature by aestheticising the political, but this does more for literature than the actual politics of nation building. There is a push here for creating a national literature in this way as nation building, but I’d like to know what methods of governing exist behind it.
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