MAGICAL REALISM:

CONCEPTS, FEATURES, PRINCIPLES AND METHODS

by Maria Achitenei
maria_achitenei@yahoo.com
T
he term “Magic Realism” was coined by Franz Roh who was referring to painting, a
nd by Massimo Bontempelli who was referring to his own writings, in the 1920ies.
It is a rich epic style characterised by the acceleration of the telling, the i
nsertion of the fictitional story into a chronicle in order to give the fantast
ic more credibility.
Slowly, it gained a lot of room in the world literary consciousness and it ap
pears that it will take a lot more than a vanguard current to replace it
I tried to enumerate several causes and conditions why magical realism broke
through the XXth century arts:
• The religious crisis: in the century of speed and great discoveries m
ankind doubted their ancestral feelings, starting to find something new or at le
ast to fill in the gaps of their knowledge about the creation of the world.
• The readers had got tired of introspection and psychological fight wit
hin the characters’ souls, so they were ready for a rich epic story which couldn
’t have been delivered but over wrapped in metaphors, hyperboles and wisdom.
• Postmodernism exhausted its well of inventing new structures because of
its lack of magic: Magical Realism filled up the gap between life and writing
with the premonition of a wonderful event.
• Magical Realism is an affective type current: it is using the deepest
roots of the human subconsciousness, assuming the ideological role that religi
on is on the verge of losing.
• The paradoxical growth of loneliness and alienation in the middle of a
more and more crowded world. Postmodernism is a cold current, an intellectual o
ne, which produces alienation; magical realism is displaying and making commo
n and ordinary all the worries previously introspected by Postmodernism.
• Magical Realistic prose moves the spirit through the old shapes, streng
thening their structures before stating them into life; it uses the free will w
ith all the respect it uses other features.
• Magical Realism appeared soon after the vanguard literary currents have
experienced new shapes in writing, and it took the advantage of melting everyth
ing and taking out only the methods it considered to be the most appropriate fo
r the novel.
• Magical Realism appeared as the natural step after the Beat culture had
discovered the happiness of simple things and had developed a taste for the epi
c stories full of metaphors, retold in the minstrel way.
• The reader was asking for something different, as realism and reality we
re sometimes too much to bear: so many people died, so the only way to face deat
h was to mock at him; this enhanced the need to read about hyperbolic deeds bel
onging to real characters, or, vice versa, about hyperbolic heroes in every da
y life. The reader needed the unforeseeable to invade his life and reinforce it
, as we all feel the need of miracles.
• Cyclically, people of the world create stories for the remembrance of th
eir heroes. Great people and countries created epic poems or odysseys in thei
r glory times; it’s now the small countries’ turn to show their talent in moder
n fairy tales within magical realism: the former colonists and colonies.
• The Magical Realistic style is designed by the language it is using, wi
th no boundaries at all, and it is due to the durational infinity of time and th
e isolated spaces delineated in metaphors.
I could identify some influences which represented the foundation of the magica
l realistic novels: realism, Baroque, Picaresque, Gothic, fable, tragedy, myths,
 legends, homeland superstitions, allegory, social realism, parable, postmodern
ism.
From realism, the magical realistic style took the language transparency
, the pseudo objectivity, relying on the basis of the XXth century conventions.
A bitter metaphor about the exhausted realism is expressed by Salman R
ushdie in Midnight’s Children, where the waitresses, in keeping with the secrec
y of the club, are blind, as the clients didn’t want any eye witness for their d
ates:
"I saw her eyes were closed; unearthly, luminous eyes had been painted on her li
ds." (p. 541)
Realism is represented within the magical realistic style as fragmenta
l, but bits of realism can be recognised by the attentive reader:
-interior or exterior realism, based on details;
-familiar realism, which is distorted by magic realism through the inter
ference of slight differences from what we are familiar with;
-impressionist realism, which registers the perception, more than it ca
talogues details; also, its opposite, which puts details in order;
-pure realism, trying to catch an impossible absolute truth;
-social, revolutionary type realism;
-spiritual realism, referring to the ideas, feelings, vices and remorse
of the characters;
-cruel, childish realism, used by the writers to show the superiority o
f the good character.
Realism is not more democratic in ideas than other literary currents. But magica
l realism is: it builds imaginary democratic worlds that will represent for t
he reader the difficulty in adapting back to his/her day to day life. Myth will
help the magical realistic style to achieve a ritual touch..
Magical Realism branched up and we could consider two main types: the South A
merican one and the Asian one. It is their genetic dowry of mixed races and cul
tures that endowed them with such exploding imagination. At a deeper study, we’l
l notice that the South American novels are subjected to some influence, while
the Asian ones are subjected to other, although from the same root: all the m
agical realistic novels have been influenced by Baroque, but while Salman Rushd
ie’s novels are more like the Spanish Culteranism , which main features are: met
aphors, poetic language, antitheses of ideas and concepts, hyperboles, mytholog
ical motifs and sensorial type of descriptions(e.g.: using the colors etc),in Ga
rcía Márquez’s work we can easily observe some features developed from the Span
ish Conceptism: ingenuity, wits, humor, moral tendency.
The Baroque style was based on “theatricality metamorphosis, ostentation” and
“metaphorical wit essence”, but also “Mobility, fluidity, motion” and “interior
disintegration producing antitheses on all levels of existence”(Adrian Marino,
The Baroque, p.306). The literary thread is striving among ugly, bizarre, extra
vagant, false, ridiculous, shocking or touching details that are interwoven in
a mesmeric order to overwhelm the reader. Unlike other styles, whose descripti
on is full of dead metaphors, magical realism abounds in metaphors in a sequenc
e of events; its metaphors are sharp and alive, naive and live, ironical and hyp
erbolic, and they are underlining the super fluidity of the story. The hyperbat
on is used to emphasize the idea, to make it heavier with importance, and it co
nfers the text lyrical quality and musicality.
Malice is another feature of the Baroque and of magical realism too; it is base
d sometimes on multi-semantic phrases which give the narrative an illusion that
it is either comic or bloodcurdling. Then we can speak about comical disproporti
on,(originating in the absurd things), which does not want to make us laugh; it
’s a game of attracting absurdity and rejecting it as unsuitable. Mockery is of
ten used, though sometimes tragic:
“Clairvoyancy made it possible for him to arrest a future traitor before he co
mmited his act of treason”
(Salman Rushdie, Shame, Picador, London 1984,p.184)
Magical Realistic characters have slight features of a picaro: a pícaro is
“crafty, cunning, naughty, cheeky”(Oxford Dictionary). His life lacks the aspira
tion of a real hero. The magical realistic hero very often strives for life in
the same way.
The pícaro (like the magical realist hero Aadam Aziz) is such a hero made up by
the ambivalence of a lonely hero and of an anti hero, he is a temporary tramp s
earching for his luck by serving different masters, coloring his achievements w
ith tricks played on everybody, with a touch of cynical scorn for those who allo
w to be tricked; the story is always told in the first person singular with a sa
tire touch, as it was told by the first pícaro hero, Lazarillo de Tormes.
In Postmodernism, tricky metafiction arose bringing on stage the narrative qual
ities of the author– which is thought actually as a dialogue between the author
and the reader: Martin Amis’ own interview in his novel Money . It was time f
or the novel as a whole to become self aware.
While being quite a new technique –Sterne had tried it long before, Cervantes to
o, the readers were amazed, but soon afterwards they needed something richer – a
s an individual can live with no faith, but a group of people will always need s
ome moral pillars to rely on in their relationship with each other. When Postmod
ernism got to the verge of collapse, the authors rediscovered the rich stock of
Gothic, with freaks and monsters, incest and sexual violence, uncanny, decepti
ve weapons and they used all this material under the moral lights, for mockery.
Freaks now changed into fabulous heroes who can melt the crystals of the shop
s (Oskar Matzerath in The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass), or who can stop time when
they want or they can make it spin, like Ursula, in One Hundred Years of Sol
itude, by García Márquez.
Like the fable, the stories inside the magical realistic novel have morals, usua
lly stated previously, so that we can focus better. Magical realism uses the fab
le to enhance the moral value of the writing.
Magical Realism tries to individualize the moral failures of some social class,
or the strife of a nation in the narrator’s imaginary homeland; the narrator is
questioning historical events and ancient beliefs by presenting them using the
vocabulary and style of Bollywood films as in a parable; but when reading Salma
n Rushdie’s novels and running into the wide range of reference of west-east-eve
rywhere culture, the reader is mesmerised by the writer’s approach to each spa
rkling period of mankind culture. However, cultural reference is mixed up with
grotesqueries in all magical realistic authors. The style wouldn’t miss the da
rk sides of the human beings’ character, as on the whole it is a satire.
The montage technique: even if the name and description of a country, and other
details are taken from real life or the reality we are familiar with, at a cl
oser look we can notice many anomalies and anachronisms the reader is unaware of
while reading, and maybe he is not interested as he follows the story in the wa
y the narrator is telling it. The country may have features borrowed from diffe
rent times or even from other countries or simply they are imagined but given re
al names. Thus it quits being the real country and it starts being an imaginar
y one.
Magical realism is an attempt to overcome death and fate. A strong and overt ele
ment in the magical realism novels is the fact they do have the structure or
the elements of a tragedy:
-a crime is usually followed by another, of revenge;
-they have a choir who comment upon the characters’ acts;
-the writers use irony to stress the importance of death;
-the heroes are always characterized by their deeds;
-the ending is almost always catastrophic;
-the story is subjected to fate;
In magical realism, tragedy is more the imitation of the divine sacrifi
ce than the disastrous characters who suffered a decline of fortune and there’s
not enough space between them and the reader to intensify the myth. The presence
of death is not scary any more, death is an everyday presence and it is life it
self that acquires metaphysical values: death is not enough, so in the end of
the novel the whole literary universe blows up.(Shame, The Ground Beneath her Fe
et, by Salman Rushdie). In Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie the boatman, th
e mob and Padma have the choir part.
As a whole, magical realism treats the Gothic touch disrespectfully, which is, t
he authors use the techniques, but in a scornful way, mingled with the accelera
tion of the telling, which is a sine qua non condition for magical realism.
The writer uses either the unequal distribution of the novelistic attention or t
he monotonous tone in describing grotesqueries and touching scenes, thus giving
the reader the feeling that yes, they count the same for the story. Sometimes,
the narrator asks himself or the readers if what has happened is true or if the
action he witnessed was real (Sheherezade’s style).
The partial metaphor (or possessive metaphor), restricting all the narra
tive universe to its only existence, when reality is partially omitted, is use
d in the same way by all the writers, which is, stressing a recurrent happening
using the genitive:
“the veil of her solipsism” (Shame, by Salman Rushdie, p.209)
“The flint of his shame ignited the tinder of his pride”
(Shame, Salman Rushdie, p.189)
This kind of metaphor is a cheap one once taken out from the text, but
it is very suggestive within the text: it is strengthening the fate type unique
ness of the way the story is told, while we, the readers, are expecting/guessing
/imagining a second way.
“plague of shame” says Rushdie in Shame, “llaga del insomnio” s
ays Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude , sometimes using
the same syntagma.
More than the Latin American or other English writers, Rushdie uses a
lot of scientific hints, some of them the newest discoveries in the astronomic a
nd scientific fields: the rich cultural references amaze the readers and make
them believe the miracles Rushdie describes are true. We find out about black
holes, creation of the universe, shifting universes and others.
As the words fate or destiny are scarcely ever mentioned, it takes the reader
a lot of time to realize how deep and strong is this belief within the novel. Fr
om the moment the reader identifies the direction of the fate- flow in the novel
, he also notices it is the writing that imposes the rules, the sequence and ev
ents leads the writer, not vice versa, everything on the basis of his own rich
imagination and knowledge. When reading magical realistic novels the reader sus
pects permanently a double solution, but the text burns with the stiffness of
fate. Coincidence is linked to fate too: it occurs so often and somewhat rhyth
mically that the reader has the feeling of discovering the text in the pattern o
f a chess game or of a palimpsest.
Themes are very important in the magic realism and they are repeated ove
r and over, like patterns: e.g. alchemy and strange skills, Apocalyptic wind, cy
clical time, farcical tragedy, loneliness of the tyrants, Methuselah lives, twin
s, the author’s self portrayal as a scribbler in the novel, quixotic characters
, winged characters.. A theme that has been approached by the magical realist wr
iters is that of marvelous and unbelievable diseases: the Moor in The Moor’s L
ast Sigh by Salman Rushdie grows older twice the normal speed, Sallem’s father f
rom Midnight’s Children by Rushdie suffers from the disease of turning white,
the inhabitants of the village of Macondo, in One Hundred Years of Solitude by
G.G.Márquez suffer from the plague of oblivion.
The overcrowded earth is also a common theme for the magical realistic writers.
Thus, Nicanor Alvarado’s seven months born children in The Autumn of the Patria
rch, by G.G.Márquez are to be compared to the twins, triplets and quadruplets of
Talvar Ulhaq in Shame by Rushdie; all of them are conceived under the threat o
f the male’s authority or dictatorship.
If we try a definition of the style, this it will be:
Magical realism is a chronicle into which there are inserted the most fantastic
details and miracles worked by oddly gifted characters who are described by thei
r deeds in a highly accelerated epic of grotesqueries full of metaphors, hyperbo
le, scientific theories and poetic language.