Gonzalo Arango


Gonzalo Arango Arias was a Colombian writer, poet, and journalist. In 1958 he led a modern literary movement known as Nadaísmo. He and other young Colombian writers and poets of his generation were inspired by surrealism, french existentialism, beat generation, dadaism, and by the Colombian writer and philosopher Fernando González Ochoa.
Arango's life was characterized by large contrasts and contradictions, from an open atheism to an intense spirituality. Those contrasts can be observed since the Primer manifiesto nadaísta, as "The artist is considered sometimes as fluctuating between holiness and madness". He was a strong critic of the society of his time.
He was planning to move to London so that "by losing me, Colombians could win me."

Life

Gonzalo Arango was born in Andes, a town of the Antioquian South-Eastern region in 1931, in a time known in Colombia as the government of the Liberals that had to face the Great Depression. It was also the time of Constitutional and social reforms such as that of president Alfonso López Pumarejo. When he was an adolescent he saw the falling of the country into a bloody fight between the two traditional political parties, after El Bogotazo of April 9, 1948, a period of violent civil strife that was triggered by the murder of the presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. He lived also at a time when the Catholic Church in Colombia possessed the control of education, thanks to the Colombian Constitution of 1886, and exerted a great authority over political, cultural and social matters, such as in the censorship over intellectual material produced in the nation. As an example, one of the works by philosopher Fernando González Ochoa, "Viaje a pie" was forbidden by the Archbishop of Medellín, in 1929, under death penalty. This social and political context promoted his growing as a writer and thinker, and would influence Arango's work.
Arango was the last son of the 13 children of Francisco Arango and Magdalena Arias. Don Paco was the telegraphist of the town, and Madgalena was a housewife.

His beginning as a writer

In 1947 he began to study Law in the University of Antioquia, but three years later he left the studies to devote himself to writing, starting with his first work "Después del hombre". About this time Eduardo Escobar wrote:

The work: miscellany of genres

Gonzalo Arango ventures into different genres: autobiography, prose of ideas, literary criticism, comments, essays, prologues, letters, journalism, poetry, diverse narrative works, theater, chronicles, profiles, memories, notes, and reports. In Felipe Restrepo David words, -a studious of his work-, Arango stands out for a literature of ideas, for a narrative thought. His legacy is an essential work, "made of metaphors and thoughts," of "reflexive force and poetry."

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla

On June 13, 1953 General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla led a bloodless Coup d'etat to the authoritarian conservative president Laureano Gómez to bring peace to the country after many years of civil war between liberals and conservatives. The Assembly that replaced the Congress, composed mostly of conservatives, re-elected him for the next presidential period until 1958. The Rojas coup was seen by many as a solution to the political crisis, the violence in the country, and as an alternative to the two traditional national parties. Young Arango was a Rojas supporter, joining the Movimiento Amplio Nacional - MAN composed of artists and young intellectuals.
In this period, Arango devoted himself to journalism and literature.
Soon, however, the reaction of conservative and liberal leaders against Rojas Pinilla was manifested in an agreement that caused his fall on May 10, 1957. While the dictator was exiled in Spain, Gonzalo Arango fled to Chocó.

Creation of Nadaísmo

He took refuge in the city of Cali in 1957. It was in a very poor and limited lifestyle, - as he writes in many letters to Alberto Aguirre-, where he started to give form to the Nadaism ideas, that he was to express in the First Manifiesto, published in Medellín in 1958. He questioned himself deeply:
The first writers to join the new movement were Alberto Escobar, Guillermo Trujillo and Amílkar Osorio, and as an inauguration they burned, in 1958, in Plazuela de San Ignacio of Medellín, some of the oficial Colombian literature, as a symbol against what they considered the traditional masterpieces of a poor Colombian literature. And one of the books included was Arango´s own first work, "After the Man".
The following year the Nadaists sabotaged the First Congress of Catholic Intellectuals in Medellín, and Arango was imprisoned in the same city. In prison he received the visit of Fernando González Ochoa, the philosopher of Otraparte, and one of his first admirators.
In 1963 he published a poetic anthology of thirteen Nadaists and wrote articles for La Nueva Prensa.

Nadaísmo (Nothing-ism)

The Nadaísmo movement continues to be a matter of study and interest, as it was an authentic literary and cultural revolution in Colombia. A bohemian, intelectual and artistic movement with important proposals. Nadaísmo was Gonzalo Arango's creation and inspiration, and his goal was "not leaving intact any faith or any idol in place," according to the Primer Manifiesto. The Movement was deeply entrenched in the 1960s and attracted young talented writers and artists of the time who created a strong artistic mouvement in Colombia, with new poetry, novels, short stories, theatre, painting, drawing, publicity and journalism.
Nadaists manifested its inconformity against the social order of the time, under the rule of the Colombian traditional political parties: Liberal and Conservative; his antagonism with a very rigid and conservative social structure; against the bourgeois ways of thinking; and opposed to revolutions with totalitarian aims.
It was thought as ended by its own founder, at the beginning of the 1970s, but was vigorously continued by some followers, as the poet Eduardo Escobar, even until modern times.
The man who wrote manifests and diatribes against Catholic writers, ended in a profound spirituality and writing love poems for his last wife, the British Angela Mary Hickie. However, for Colombian writers of Nadaism the movement is still alive in the interest, reading and writing of many youngsters.
Gonzalo Arango was also a journalist and he participated in different newspapers and magazines within his country: El Tiempo, El Espectador, El Siglo, Nueva Prensa, Cromos Magazine, and Corno Emplumado and Zona Franca. He published also the Nadaism Magazine and the antology of 13 Nadaist poets.
He ended his life in a car accident on the road Bogotá - Tunja on September 25, 1976.

Works

Primer manifiesto vallecaucano
Mensaje bisiesto a los intelectuales colombianos
Exposición radiantiva de la poesía nadaísta
HK-111
Las promesas de Prometeo
Medellín a solas contigo..