This post is part of
the Magic Realism Blog Hop 2015.
For links to the other blogs taking
part, check out the links belowFor
three years I have been reading and reviewing magic realism on
the Magic
Realism Books Blog.
And the more I read, the more I am of the opinion that magic realism
is not a
genre, but a way of looking at and describing the world – the real
world. Gabriel Garcia Marquez said: It
always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the
imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in
all my work that does not have a basis in reality.
Magic
realism is a rejection of the modern Western rationalist and
scientific world view, which excludes the marvellous and
unexplainable. You can see this in terms of cultural differences
between the West and other cultures. But I believe that, like me, the
majority of people in the West actually have a magic realist outlook
on life. Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that: The
world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to
grow sharper. I
totally agree.
When
I am writing (especially when I am writing poetry, but also sometimes
when I write fiction) I am conscious that I am experiencing and
seeing the world differently. It is a form of heightened or extended
reality. Michel Ajvaz wrote: The
frontier of our world is not far away; it doesn’t run along the
horizon or in the depths. It glimmers faintly close by, in the
twilight of our nearest surroundings; out of the corner of our eye we
can always glimpse another world, without realizing it.
Fantasy
crosses the frontier and stays there. Magic Realism presents the
world with the frontier in place – glimmering in the twilight. It
does not deny reality but is, in Alejo Carpentier’s words, a
privileged revelation of reality, an unaccustomed or singularly
favourable illumination of the previously unremarked riches of
reality, an amplification of the measures and categories of reality,
perceived with peculiar intensity due to the exaltation of the spirit
which elevates it to a kind of “limit state”.
Without magic, reality becomes two dimensional. The magic illuminates
and throws the “real” into relief. The real can only be seen
fully if you see it from different angles and perspectives, if you
can hold it up to the light and look into it and see that the magic
is inside and an integral part of it.
