Thinking about exile lately, I found this essay that I wrote for a global core class. I highly recommend this book, especially for people who leave abroad and/or feminists. Despite the despair that is found throughout the book there is a beautiful light at the end:)
José Donoso, The Garden Next Door.
Donoso explores the double theme of exile and identity in this novella. Try to define those ideas in terms of the book and show how they affect the book's structure--its plot, characters, even its devices (metamorphosis especially).
Donoso explores in depth the themes of exile and identity of Latin American emigrants in Europe. Is exile defined by a place or by a feeling? How is one’s identity modified in exile? Can one go back? Should one go back? What is the cultural baggage of children of exiles? Is there salvation in exile? Is art a salvation? are questions that the characters attempt to answer.
Julio, the narrator and the reader’s center of conscience, and Gloria, his wife are Chilean intellectuals that immigrated to Spain with their son Pato. While in Chile they were part of the upper class, in their Spanish exile they faced personal, professional and financial hardships.
For Julio home is ‘a house, a limited space where your heart feels safe.’ (p.152) Exile is defined contrastingly, as a prison: while he loses his ties with Chile, its places and people, he is unable to construct a satisfactory identity in Spain, since his novel is repeatedly rejected. He is trapped between a lost identity, and a new one that failed to emerge as desired: ‘ I can’t go back. How? Without a single book published in Spain, …an exile at home and not abroad.’(p.148).
Julio’s attempt to write ‘the great Chilean’ novel that would build a political commentary based on his experience in a Chilean prison has been repeatedly deemed worthless by publishers: I couldn’t adapt…. Monclus’ (p.22) The Chilean reality was too specific and obsolete to be received by consumers of modern subjective literature. According to Bijou, the son of Julio’s exiled friends, ‘Chile has gone out of fashion’.(p.42). His parents left Europe as an accept of failure, since ‘they couldn’t take it anymore, they were old…failed as painters in the European world’ (p.42) Children of Latin American immigrants, grew up with’ identity problems, …, dispersion, defeat’ (p.23). Pato and Bijou both ran away from their troubled homes to live chaotic lives as luxury prostitutes and thieves. Having their roots in Europe, but still inheriting their parents desperation, children of immigrants tend localize at the periphery of the bohemian society.
One isn’t defeated until one hasn’t consumed most or all the possibilities of accomplishment. Old age comes with a consummation of possibilities. The garden next door, reminiscent of home, with its celebrations of youth and sexuality, as well as Bijou’s lifestyle, symbolizes the lost youth Julio and Gloria and emphasizes their failure. Julio desires Bijou and his lack of structure in life, his liberation from cultural, professional and sexual norms: ‘Bijou’s attraction was not quite sexual…pains that had been tearing me apart. ‘ (p.70)
Having hit rock bottom, Gloria with her nervous breakdown, and Julio with his literary failure, they must undergo metamorphosis. Paradoxically, Julio’s failure as the male of the family fueled Gloria’s healing. For both Julio and Gloria return to Chile is unacceptable. What is left to do is to transcend their inner prisons in exile, find their own adjusted ‘tone’ and embrace it by creating a new identity. Giulia escaped the prison of her illness and discovered her talent as a writer that has abandoned the greater political concern of her work. Since, as Julio said, ‘the great novel has never been a novel of convictions; it has always been a novel of the heart’, Gloria adopted a ‘minor tone’ by writing a subjective experience though the mask of her husband. (p.150, p.240). Art is for her the salvation. However, Julio transcended the prison of his lack of talent as a writer and exploited his ability to work well within imposed structures by becoming a professor: ‘I can’t create beauty but I know how to appreciate it’ (p. 136, p.228)
