Saer’s aesthetic position

Abstract

This paper explores the aesthetic ideas of Juan Jose Saer in his essays, and its relation with the poetic that he develops in his novels. It attempts to characterize Saer´s point of view as a formalist perspective, that is specially influenced by Theodor Adorno´s aesthetic theory. The objective is to distinguish Saer´s conception of avantgarde –related with the practice of a “programmatic hermetism”–, from other avantgarde conceptions and in contrast with the idea of “the new” supported by mass culture. This strategy exposes the differences between Saer and some writers of the “New latin-american novel” in the 60’s and 70’s, and also the affinities and divergences amongst the argentinian author and the french writers considered to belong to Nouvean roman literary movement. The main question underlying this paper is how Saer restores, with an “outmoded” emphasis, the modern creed in the Form that began with Romanticism of Jena (and “grew” with Baudelaire, Valery and Flaubert), which contributed to establish an ethos of the art that could still be worth in the contemporary debates.