Once again we find ourselves before one of the writers buried in the cemetery of oblivion, but this brief article is intended to create an interest to be recovered, reread and studied. Memory is conditioned by oblivion, and this has been one of the broad sources of interest that García Ponce has found in many of the writers he has been so passionate about. From Thomas Mann, Musil, Borges and most notably Georges Bataille and Pierre Klossowski, authors he has called an extension of himself, in which he finds himself in them, as they find themselves in him, this form of perverse literary play, as he would explain in his book called El libro where: “to teach is to pervert.” As a reader, one loses that innocence the moment one encounters the intellectual world offered by a book or a novel, and it is not surprising that such knowledge generates in us a morbid curiosity, a curiosity that feeds on more knowledge, allowing us to be perverted with each text that nourishes our brain.
Perhaps to call this brief writing “Juan García Ponce:
The Mexican Acéphale” is a bit of an exaggeration on my part, but without the existence of this writer, the translated texts of Bataille and Klossowski would possibly have taken years to reach this part of the world.
On the other hand, García Ponce was a great fan of eroticism, which was not much appreciated in those years and is possibly the reason why he has been forgotten by most Mexicans. In a generation as oppressed as México was in the sixties and a country with a very strong religious burden to this day, it is understandable that not much was or is said about these issues.
Ponce was a member of the so–called Generación de La Casa del Lago (Generation of the House of the Lake), who were interested in the literature that was being written beyond our borders, with the aim of young Mexican writers in the 1960s of finding and assimilating literature that had hitherto been considered foreign, in order to disseminate it later in their critical work, in their own creative work or through conferences or lectures.[1] A primary objective of these writers was to set aside nationalist sentiments and indigenist literature in order to embark on a much more universal literary expression.
It is in this way that Ponce found a fascination with Bataille to whom he dedicated several essays, among them: “The Tenderness of Georges Bataille”, “The Impossibility of Dying” available in his book Apariciones. He even found references in his novels that only readers of these controversial authors would understand, such as Marcela, which refers to Marcelle from Story of the Eye.
But possibly the most characteristic and visible influence in Ponce’s work is Pierre Klossowski, to whom he has dedicated entire books such as: “Teología y pornografía: Pierre Klossowski en su obra una descripción” or his book “La errancia sin fin: Musil, Borges, Klossowski” and translations into Spanish such as La vocation suspendue, Le Baphomet, La revocation de l’edit de nantes and Roberte ce soir.
His admiration for the thought of Pierre Klossowski was such that in his novel De ánima he faithfully recreates an erotic story in the form of a diary inspired entirely by Klossowski’s The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Key.
Ponce is undoubtedly a writer who gives much to talk about, and if he had lived in the time and place where the Acéphale meetings took place, García Ponce would undoubtedly be one of the equally outstanding members, his ideas about spirituality, multiplicity, simulacra, the pantomime of his characters, and eroticism, make him what could have been an exemplary member of Acéphale.
[1] Juan García Ponce. Obras reunidas III, novelas cortas II. Fondo de Cultura Económica, México. 2004. pág.407
