Por media vida deslumbrados

Abstract

In this essay the idea is planted, perhaps with greater intensity that in Huasipungo (1934) and El Chulla Romero and Flores (1958), it is in three pieces of work studied by Jorge Icaza where it can be clearly appreciated –in such a manner that it dazzles– his esthetic proposal: in the theatrical piece Flagelo (1936), the novel Media vida deslumbrados (1942) and the story «El nuevo San Jorge» (1952). Without alienating itself from social denunciation, Icaza closes his dramatic proposal with Flagelo; which will constitute a sort of literary manifesto, by the esthetic repercussions which can be observed in the total narrative of the author. In Media vida deslumbrados an effective equilibrium between the author’s proposals and his zeal to demonstrate social denunciation can be appreciated. According to the author of this essay, «El nuevo San Jorge» would be the most radical masterpiece, in terms of esthetic proposal, in all of Icaza´s work; in the same piece of work the neo-Baroque elements are highlighted, with insistence in masked games, the intermittences between lights and shadows, and in the multiple, and at the same time, one dimensional face of the people who unlawfully hold power –some of these common elements of the two masterpieces mentioned, and El Chulla Romero
and Flores.