The intellectual hero. The figure of the martyr poet in. "Literature is fire" by Mario Vargas Llosa

Abstract

This article analyze the way in which Mario Vargas Llosa constructs in "Literature is Fire" the image of intellectual hero from the life of the poet Carlos Oquendo de Amat. The text "Literature is Fire", read on August 11, 1967, in Caracas, in connection with the awarding to Vargas Llosa of the Romulo Gallegos Prize, is one of the most extraordinary speeches given by a writer at the moment of receiving a literary prize. The emphasis with which the image of the non-conformist writer is constructed from the memory of a poet like Carlos Oquendo de Amat and the way in which literature is presented as a critical, corrosive, and indomitable activity, converts this speech into a sample of the development that the intellectual field had reached at that time in relation to the levels of consciousness that the writers of the time had regarding their own condition, their profession, and their relations with power. For the analysis, we use the framework of cultural criticism and focus on the relationships that intellectuals, through the exercise of literature, establish with power.