Baldomero Lillo (6 January 1867, in
Lota, Chile
Lota is a city and commune located in the center of Chile on the Gulf of Arauco (in Spanish), in the southern Concepción Province of the BiobÃo Region, south of Concepción, and is one of the ten cities (communes) that constitutes the Conc ...
– 10 September 1923, in
San Bernardo, Chile
San Bernardo () is a city in Chile, located within the Greater Santiago metropolitan area. It is both a Communes of Chile, commune and the capital of Maipo Province, in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. San Bernardo also serves as the seat of the ...
[Chang-Rodriguez, Raquel, and Malva E. Filer. Voces de Hispanoamerica. 3rd ed. Boston: Thomson Heinle, 2004.]) was a
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...
an
Naturalist
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
author, whose works had social protest as their main theme.
Biography
Lillo's father traveled to California to participate in the 1848
Gold Rush
A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, ...
, but returned with no fortune. He did learn much about
mining
Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...
, and he moved to southern
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...
, Lota, to work the
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal i ...
mines. Baldomero Lillo grew up in these mining communities and worked the mines himself. He was exposed to the writings of the French author
Émile Zola
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, ; ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of Naturalism (literature), naturalism, and an important contributor to ...
, who used the philosophy of
Positivism
Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positivemeaning '' a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Soci ...
and the literary current of
Naturalism to try to change the terrible conditions of French coal miners. Lillo was able to observe similar conditions in the Chilean mines and set out to improve the conditions of the workers by dramatizing their plight. Lillo wrote many short stories (collected in two major books, ''Sub Sole'' and ''Sub Terra'') which sparked the interest of social activists who were appalled by the conditions in the mines. The story that follows is typical of his efforts.
In "The Devil's Tunnel" the miners are seemingly trapped by their destiny to live out their squalid and exploited lives, which are dominated by the need for raw materials and the machinery of the Europeans. At the story's end there is a strong contrast between the clean, pure and benevolent sky, and the underground monster that devours the humans who dare to penetrate its dark lair.
Excerpt: "The Devil's Tunnel", from ''Sub Terra''
The excerpt below are the closing paragraphs of Lillo's short story about a miner who loses his life in an accident. His mother, who has lost her husband and two other sons in similar accidents, cannot emotionally deal with his death and dies in a suicidal jump into the mine, personified as a monster who consumes humans.
Footnotes
See also
References
* Adams, Nicholson B., et al. ''Hispanoamérica en su literatura''. (2nd ed.) New York: W. W. Norton, 1993, pp. 225–234.
* Chang-RodrÃguez, Raquel. ''Voces de Hispanoamérica''. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2004, pp. 258–267.
* Child, Jack. ''Introduction to Latin American Literature: a Bilingual Anthology''. Lanham: University Press of America,1994, pp. 197–210.
* Englekirk, John E. ''An Outline History of Spanish American Literature''. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965, pp. 92–93.
* Mujica, Bárbara. ''Texto y vida: introducción à la literatura hispanoamericana''. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992 p. 343.
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lillo, Baldomero
19th-century Chilean novelists
19th-century Chilean male writers
Chilean male novelists
People from Lota, Chile
1867 births
1923 deaths
20th-century Chilean novelists
20th-century Chilean male writers
19th-century Chilean short story writers
20th-century Chilean short story writers
Chilean male short story writers