Rafael Landivar and his Epic Poem Rusticatio Mexicana

Rafael Landivar was born in Guatemala in 1731, entered the Jesuit order and went to Mexico to study in 1750, and was ordained and returned to Guatemala in 1755. There he taught rhetoric and grammar until 1767, when upon the order of King Charles III of Spain, all Jesuits were expelled from the Western Hemisphere. After several years of wandering and hardship, Landivar found a home in Bologna among a group of exiled Jesuits in 1770. He remained in Italy until his death in 1793.

 

He is remembered above all for his poem Rusticatio Mexicana, first published in Modena in 1781. The poem deals with both Mexico and Guatemala; however, in Europe at the time few people had heard of Guatemala, and the term "Mexico" was often used to refer to a territory including Guatemala and much else of Central and South America.

Rusticatio Mexicana is often compared to Vergil's Georgics. Although both poems deal with rural life, the comparison is problematic. Landivar's poem is much longer than Vergil's. It deals with a much greater range of subjects. And while the Georgics harken back nostalgically to an imagined Roman Golden Age in an attempt to inspire Vergil's contemporaries to greater morality and better citizenship, the Rusticatio Mexicana celebrates the wonders of Guatemala and Mexicana in Landivar's own time.

And while Landivar certainly acknowledges following in Vergil footsteps, there are actually more homages to the Aeneid in his epic than to the Georgics, as well as references to many other authors, ancient, Renaissance and also contemporary with Landivar, including several of his Jesuit colleagues. These many references are the appreciative comments of a very well-read author, not the copying of an unimaginative hack.

Landivar is deservedly well-known in present-day Latin America, -- where, for example, a large university in Guatemala is named after him, and many editions of the Rusticatio Mexicana have appeared -- and undeservedly obscure elsewhere.

In writing this post I have referred to Andrew Laird's volume The Epic of America: An Introduction to Rafael Landivar and the Rusticatio Mexicana. In addition to the text of Rusticatio Mexicana alongside an English translation, the volume texts and translations of several shorter poems by Landivar, several very illuminating essays about the poem, the author and Latin American literature written in Latin.

In my opinion, Laird's volume has only one serious flaw. Sadly, it is a major flow, and utterly inexplicable: the text of the Rusticatio Mexicana and its English translation, presumably the biggest attraction of the entire work, are printed in a much smaller font than the rest of the work. The other way around would've made far more sense. 

Those who can read Spanish may prefer one of the Latin-Spanish editions. Not to mention those few and blessed who can actually read Latin with no help whatsoever from any translations.