The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations - Softcover

Le Clézio, J. M. G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226110036 ISBN 13: 9780226110035

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2009

Synopsis

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, J. M. G. Le Clézio here conjures the consciousness of Mexico, powerfully evoking the dreams that made and unmade an ancient culture. Le Clézio’s haunting book takes us into the dream that was the religion of the Aztecs, a religion whose own apocalyptic visions anticipated the coming of the Spanish conquerors. Here the dream of the conquistadores rises before us, too, the glimmering idea of gold drawing Europe into the Mexican dream. Against the religion and thought of the Aztecs and the Tarascans and the Europeans in Mexico, Le Clézio also shows us those of the “barbarians” of the north, the nomadic Indians beyond the pale of the Aztec frontier.

Finally, Le Clézio’s book is a dream of the present, a meditation on what in Amerindian civilizations—in their language, in their way of telling tales, of wanting to survive their own destruction—moved the poet, playwright, and actor Antonin Artaud and motivates Le Clézio in this book. His own deep identification with pre-Columbian cultures, whose faith told them the wheel of time would bring their gods and their beliefs back to them, finds fitting expression in this extraordinary book, which brings the dream around.

“We are lucky to have in Le Clézio a writer of great quality who brings his particular sensibility and talent here to remind us of the very nature of the rituals and myths of the civilizations of ancient Mexico; he provides us with descriptions as precise as they are mysterious.”—Le Figaro

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Not one dream but many unfold in J. M. G. Le Clezio's conjuring of the consciousness of Mexico, a powerful evocation of the imaginings that made and unmade an ancient culture. "What motivated me", Le Clezio has said, "was a sort of dream about what has disappeared and what could have been". A widely respected French novelist who for many years has studied pre-Columbian Mexico, Le Clezio imagined how the thought of early Indian civilizations might have evolved if not for the interruption of European conquest. In an unprecedented way, his book takes us into the dream that was the religion of the Aztecs, which in its own apocalyptic visions anticipated the coming of the Spanish conquerors. Here the dream of the conquistadores rises before us, too, the glimmering idea of gold drawing Europe into the Mexican dream. Against the religion and thought of the Aztecs and the Tarascans and the Europeans in Mexico, Le Clezio also shows us those of the "barbarians" of the north, the nomadic Indians beyond the pale of the Aztec frontier. Finally, Le Clezio's book is a dream of the present, a meditation on what in Amerindian civilizations - in their language, in their way of telling tales, of wanting to survive their own destruction - moved the poet, playwright, and actor Antonin Artaud and motivates Le Clezio in this book. The author's deep identification with pre-Columbian cultures, whose faith told them the wheel of time would bring their gods and their beliefs back to them, finds fitting expression in this extraordinary book, which brings the dream around.

About the Author:

J. M. G. Le Clézio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Nice in 1940. In 1963 he received the Renaudot Prize for his first novel, Le proces-verbal. He has studied the Indian civilizations of pre-Columbian Mexico since 1971 and has published translations of Mayan sacred texts and an evocation of three sacred villages in the land of the Maya, Trois villes saintes (1980).

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0226110036
• ISBN 13: 9780226110035
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240