Juan Manuel Torres on His Way to Literary Paradise between Poland and Mexico

Abstract

The essay is dedicated to the work of the Mexican writer and film director Juan Manuel Torres (1938–1980), who had lived in Łódź in the 1960s for many years and studied directing at the film school there. His prose is strongly influenced by Polish literature and culture. Torres’ work is currently experiencing a rediscovery: the historical-critical edition of his Obras completas [Collected Works] was recently published (2020 and 2021) by the Mexican publishing press Nieve de Chamoy (two volumes so far, the last third is announced for the end of 2023). The aim of this paper is to present and interpret Torres’ literary work and to outline its biographical, historical, and theoretical contexts. What concept of literature and art can be found in his autofiction? In Torres’ work, the reality of the Cold War meets the atmosphere of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The author registers changes in the sexual morality and deconstructs gender stereotypes. In his prose, one can find some (for his times) provocative motifs, such as abortion, homosexuality or ménage à trois. Torres combines them with a complex poetological reflection on the crisis of representation and the role of art in the light of the beginning of postmodernism and the idea of the “literature of exhaustion.” The essay consists of five parts. After discussing the latest edition and introducing the life and work of Torres, I present the literary contexts in which his writing can be placed. The fourth part is devoted to the collection of his short stories El viaje [The Journey], which contains the most interesting texts for the Polish audience in the discussed edition. The last part is a sketch of Torres understanding of literature and art. The focus is on the intertextual allusions to Central European modernism, especially to works by Bruno Schulz and Hermann Broch.