The Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20)
by David Gowler
The parable of the Sower (Mark 4:3-8) is a brief narrative about farming that could be interpreted in numerous ways. Its agricultural images, however, are standard metaphors in Jewish traditions both for instruction and for God’s interactions with Israel. They also are standard analogies about education (Greek, paideia) in Greco-Roman traditions: sowers (teachers) sow (teach), and their seeds (words) are received by various soils (students). In this context, the Gospel of Mark uses the Sower parable to illustrate differing responses to the message and ministry of Jesus.
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/passages/main-articles/parable-of-the-sower.aspx
What is the relationship of the parable (Mark 4:3-8) to its interpretation (Mark 4:14-20)?
The Hebrew word mashal, often translated in Greek as parabole, designates a variety of literary forms that use figurative language. Parables usually involve some sort of implied analogy, though the parallels between the things being compared are often not explicit.
Parables, by their analogical nature, encourage hearers to imagine new possibilities and even to generate allegorical interpretations as a way to respond to the open-ended interpretative potential of parables. The differences between this parable (Mark 4:3-8) and its allegorical interpretation (Mark 4:14-20) lead most scholars to conclude that the interpretation likely stems from the early church, not from Jesus (compare Gospel of Thomas 9, which lacks the interpretation; but see also 2Esd 8:41-44, which includes an interpretation for its sowing metaphor). The language and perspective of the interpretation, for instance, tend to be distinctive of the post-Easter church. The analogies within the interpretation are also inconsistent. For example, do the seeds symbolize the “word” (Mark 4:14) or “people” (Mark 4:15-20)?
The parable invites further questions, such as why any person dependent on productive crops for survival would sow seed among thorns, on rock, and on a beaten path? Some interpreters posit that the parable portrays an incompetent sower, whereas others argue that it realistically depicts first-century farming practices where sowing can precede plowing.
Some recent scholars suggest that Jesus’ parables can include allegory and argue that both the parable and its interpretation come from the historical Jesus. From this perspective, the message of the parable and its allegorical interpretation are basically equivalent.
All interpretations depend upon the context one chooses. The precise historical context in which Jesus spoke the parable is irrecoverable. The historical Jesus could have used the parable to illustrate various responses to his ministry. It could illustrate, as can the parable of the Mustard Seed, how the kingdom of God is present in Jesus’ seemingly insignificant ministry. Perhaps it even suggests Israel’s remnant returning from exile. Mark’s Gospel understands it as illustrative of not only Jesus’ mission but also of the evangelistic work of his followers: they all “sow” the message of God’s (eschatological) kingdom.
What do the different harvests imply?
The parable as it stands in Mark exemplifies differing responses to Jesus’ teaching. The fates of the seeds ultimately depend upon the places where they are sown, so the parable emphasizes the receptivity of the soil (hearer). The first three seeds fail to produce any harvest, which illustrates three types of failed responses to the message of the kingdom; even initially positive or joyful responses can result in failure (Mark 4:3-7, Mark 14-19).
The seeds that produce three levels of plentiful harvest symbolize those hearers who respond positively to that message and persevere. If the harvest yield of thirty, sixty, and hundredfold is miraculous, the harvest can signify the kingdom of God’s eschatological “harvest” at the end of the world. If it is merely a bountiful harvest (i.e., not miraculous), such as Gen 26:12 (Isaac’s yield was a hundredfold, and he was blessed by God) and other texts (for example, Pliny, Natural History 18.40.141; Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 8.7.4) suggest, then it can be interpreted primarily as the kingdom of God being present in Jesus’ ministry and the ministries of his disciples (Mark 6:7-13).
As John Chrysostom notes (Homily 46, On Matthew), Jesus often uses nature to illustrate his message, because nature follows a set course: sowers sow, crops appear, and the harvest follows. Agricultural metaphors are not just understandable and vivid for firstcentury hearers; they also imply that the same inevitability applies to Jesus’ message about the kingdom: although there are examples of failure, the harvest is assured. Mark’s interpretation of the parable argues that Jesus’ message follows a similar pattern of rejection and acceptance. The parable thereby also prepares his followers for the rejection and acceptance of their preaching of the kingdom of God, since his disciples will experience similar failures and successes in their ministries.
The parable as it currently stands in Mark thus functions as a prophetic warning to those who do not listen, understand, and act (the first three seeds), but the primary emphasis seems to be a prophetic proclamation of the (ultimate) success of those who do, who are comparable to the holy seed, or remnant, of Israel implied in Isa 6:9-13. Mark’s reading of the parable further emphasizes the necessity to hear, understand, and respond appropriately to the message of the kingdom of God.
David Gowler, "Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20)", n.p. [cited 23 Sep 2020]. Online: https://www.bibleodyssey.org:443/en/passages/main-articles/parable-of-the-sower
Contributors
David Gowler Professor, Oxford College of Emory University
David B. Gowler is Pierce Chair of Religion at Oxford College of Emory University and Senior Faculty Fellow at the Center for Ethics, Emory University. He is the author of the books Host, Guest, Enemy, and Friend: Portraits of the Pharisees in Luke and Acts (Wipf and Stock, 2008) What Are They Saying About the Parables? (Paulist Press, 2000), What Are They Saying About the Historical Jesus? (Paulist Press, 2007), and James Through the Centuries (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).
The parable of the Sower can be understood in a variety of ways, but within the Gospel of Mark it illustrates differing responses to the message and ministry of Jesus.
Did you know…?
The Sower is one of only three parables in the Gospels that have detailed interpretations attached to them. The other two are the Weeds among the Wheat (Matt 13:24-30, Matt 36-43) and the Net (Matt 13:47-50).
The parable is one of only three parables found in all three Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas, along with the Mustard Seed and the Wicked Tenants.
The parable of the Sower is the only parable that begins with the command to “Listen,” and the Greek word for hear is used thirteen times in Mark 4:1-33
The sower virtually disappears from the parable after the first part of verse 4, which focuses attention on the reception of the audience—the productivity (or lack thereof) of the seeds that are sown.
In Mark, those on the outside who do not understand surprisingly include Jesus’ mother and brothers (Mark 3:31-35).
The Greek word for seed does not occur in Mark’s parable or interpretation. In the parable itself, Mark uses singular pronouns for the seeds that are lost and are unproductive (“one”; Mark 4:4-6) but plural pronouns for the seeds that produce a great harvest (Mark 4:8).
This inaugural volume in the Bible in Its World series offers a comprehensive commentary on the parables of Jesus. Arland Hultgren's outstanding work features fresh translations of the parables in the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas, followed by interpretive notes and commentary on the theological meaning and significance of each parable for readers today.
After an introductory chapter on the nature of parables and their interpretation, Hultgren studies the thirty-eight parables of Jesus thematically, exploring in turn "parables of the revelation of God," "parables of exemplary behavior," "parables of wisdom," "parables of life before God," "parables of final judgment," "allegorical parables," and "parables of the kingdom." He also discusses how the three evangelists used the parables within the literary framework and theological interests of their Gospels. The book ends with a close look at the parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas.
Distinctive in the field for its scope of coverage and its goal of addressing the widest possible audience, this volume will be a valuable study resource for classrooms, churches, and general readers.
The book (at this stage) contains two modern receptions of the parables from Latin America. One reception is that of Elsa Tamez, Emeritus
Professor of Biblical Studies
at the
Latin
American Biblical University in San Jose, Costa Rica. Her first book was Bible of the Oppressed (1982).
The second reception, which I'll actually discuss first, comes in two forms from the "peasants of Solentiname": a written commentary (The Gospel in Solentiname) and works of art (The Gospel in Art by the Peasants of Solentiname).
First, a discussion of the commentary and the community that produced it:
In 1966, a Nicaraguan priest named Ernesto Cardenal and a Colombian poet named William Agudelo founded a small contemplative community on the largest island of Solentiname, an archipelago of thirty-eight islands on Lake Nicaragua. As part of his mission, Cardenal decided that instead of preaching on the Gospel readings during Sunday mass and other services, he and his congregation would have conversations about those texts. Cardenal later published a collection of these dialogues among those nonspecialist voices within “grassroots” Christianity. In fact, Cardenal declares: “The commentaries of the campesinos [peasant
farmers] are usually of greater profundity than that of many theologians, but of a simplicity like that of the Gospel itself. This is not surprising: The Gospel or ‘Good News’ (to the poor) was written for them, and by people like them” (Cardenal 1976: 1:vii).
The people of Solentiname formed a fishing and farming cooperative, a clinic, a center for artists, a museum of pre-Colombian art found in Solentiname, and a school of primitive painting that became internationally famous. Approximately one thousand people lived in Solentiname during this time (ca. 1970-1982).
Cardenal lived in the lay monastery, Our Lady of Solentiname, which was on the largest island, and those who participated in the services mostly lived in thatched huts scattered on the shores of the larger islands of the archipelago.
The process for these dialogues follows a similar pattern. The Gospel reading is distributed to all in the congregation who could read, and the passage is read aloud so all could participate. The campesinos discuss the passage verse by verse, and Cardenal started using a tape recorder during the discussions, so that he could preserve the insights of his congregation in written commentaries
(Cardenal 1976: 1:viii-x).
Although these commentaries contain common themes about God’s love and liberation, the people involved in these dialogues have distinctive and often different reactions to the Gospel text they discuss. The peasants’ interpretations of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Cardenal 1979: 3:251-256), for example, quickly lead them into the topics of the rich and poor, salvation and damnation.
Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan poet, priest and revolutionary, dies at 95
Nicaraguan poet and Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal in Baltimore in 2010. (Dennis Drenner/for The Washington Post)
By Harrison Smith
March 2, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/ernesto-cardenalnicaraguan-poet-priest-and-revolutionary-dies-at-95/2020/03/02/4baa213c-5c96-11ea9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html
Father Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan poet, priest and political revolutionary who wielded his pen as a weapon against two autocratic regimes — the Somoza family dynasty and the left-wing Sandinista party that took its place — died March 1 in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital. He was 95.
His personal assistant, Luz Marina Acosta, confirmed the death to the Associated Press. Father Cardenal had recently been hospitalized for respiratory problems. In a sign of his renown in Nicaragua, the government of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega ordered three days of national mourning, despite having persecuted Father Cardenal after he resigned from the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the early 1990s.
For many Nicaraguans, Father Cardenal was revered as a literary beacon and a moral authority, a Catholic priest who drew on Marx as well as the Gospels to champion social justice in his ministry and writings.
Father Cardenal speaks at his 90th birthday celebration in Managua, Nicaragua. (Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters)
One of Latin America’s most acclaimed poets, he wrote verses that offered a cosmic fusion of spirituality, politics, science and history, while appearing at frequent lectures and readings that made him a kind of international ambassador for Nicaragua.
Father Cardenal drew few boundaries between his callings. The son of a wealthy Nicaraguan family, he fought with a revolutionary group in his late 20s, then emerged as a leading proponent of liberation theology, which emphasizes Jesus’s message to the poor and oppressed.
With a thick beard and trademark black beret, he offered Mass to Sandinista revolutionaries in the jungle, later joining Ortega when those forces marched into Managua in 1979 and toppled the Somoza family, whose rule had lasted more than 40 years.
Declaring that “the triumph of the revolution is the triumph of poetry,” he went on to work for nearly a decade as Nicaragua’s minister of culture, angering the Vatican with his mix of politics and religion while aiming to teach tens of thousands of Nicaraguans how to read and write.
Father Cardenal traced his religious convictions to the years he spent at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, where he befriended Thomas Merton, the distinguished writer and priest. He later completed his religious training in Mexico, Colombia and Nicaragua, where he was ordained in 1965 and settled on the Solentiname Islands in Lake Nicaragua.
He had originally intended to establish a parish church. But Father Cardenal, a sculptor as well as a writer, instead presided over a sprawling art colony, turning Solentiname into a haven for painters and spiritual seekers alike. On Sundays, he led the islanders in discussions of Christianity, eventually recording their conversations and adapting the dialogues into a multivolume work, “The Gospel in Solentiname” (1975), considered a touchstone of liberation theology.
“As the peasants of Solentiname got deeper and deeper into the Gospel,” Father Cardenal wrote in the book, “they could not help but feel united to their brother and sister peasants who were suffering persecution and terror. . . . For this solidarity to be real they had to lay security, and life, on the line.”
Some of the islanders joined the Sandinistas, organizing in a 1977 raid against Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s forces with the blessing of Father Cardenal. The government
responded by destroying the Solentiname chapel and other buildings, and Father Cardenal was labeled the “No. 1 enemy of the people.”
He later served in the Sandinista cabinet alongside his brother, education minister and fellow Catholic priest Fernando Cardenal, who died in 2016. Both men defied Pope John Paul II’s order to quit their government jobs and focus on their ministries, and during a 1983 visit to Managua the pope publicly reprimanded Father Cardenal, reportedly telling him to “straighten out your position with the church.”
The next year, Father Cardenal was suspended from the priesthood, setting off a break with the church that was repaired only last year, when he was absolved by Pope Francis. By then, Father Cardenal had become an outspoken critic of Ortega, whose party had stifled a rebellion from a CIA-backed army known as the contras and was accused of rampant corruption and human rights abuses.
His split from the Sandinistas was “perhaps his most important political legacy,” said Manuel Orozco, a Nicaragua scholar with the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. The party had “refused to recognize the atrocities committed in the 1980s,” Orozco said in an email, and transformed “into a typical Latin American clientelistic and populist party.” After Ortega returned to power in 2007, he added, Father Cardenal “was politically persecuted by the government, publicly attacked by the regime and even legally prosecuted on false charges.”
“It was a beautiful revolution. But what happened is that it was betrayed,” Father Cardenal told the Agence France-Presse in 2015, recalling his turn away from the Sandinistas. “There is now the family dictatorship of Daniel Ortega. That’s not what we fought for.”
[Ernesto Cardenal, poet and Catholic priest, still causes controversy at age 86]
Ernesto Cardenal Martínez was born in Granada, on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, on Jan. 20, 1925. After graduating from a Jesuit high school, he studied literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and at Columbia University in Manhattan, where he immersed himself in American poetry.
“From Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore he borrowed the belief that poetry is a public language of precise documentary facts that he called ‘exteriorismo,’ ” said Northwestern professor Harris Feinsod, author of “The Poetry of the Americas: From Good Neighbors to Countercultures.”
“At the same time, from Latin American poets like Rubén Darío and Pablo Neruda, he took the belief that poetry could be a vehicle for Latin American nations to craft independent political visions,” Feinsod added by email. Poems such as “Zero Hour” and “With Walker in Nicaragua” recalled the history of U.S. imperialism through figures such as Sam Zemurray, the head of United Fruit Company, and William Walker, who conquered Nicaragua in the mid-1850s.
Father Cardenal also spoke out against the Somoza regime in his verse, skirting government censorship by publishing outside the country as an “Anonymous Nicaraguan.” His later works increasingly incorporated scientific themes, notably in “Cosmic Canticle” (1989), a 500-page poem that drew on the theories of physicists such as Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking
“Science brings me close to God because it describes the universe and creation, and that brings me close to the creator,” he told the New York Times in 2015. “For me this is a prayer.”
Father Cardenal leaves no immediate survivors, according to local news reports. In recent years he led a Granada cultural center, the Casa de los Tres Mundos, and received literary honors including Chile’s Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award and Spain’s Reina Sofia poetry prize.
In interviews, Father Cardenal declared that Jesus had led him to Marx, once calling himself “a revolutionary for the sake of His kingdom.”
“The Bible is full of revolutions,” he said at a public reading in 2014. “The prophets are people with a message of revolution. Jesus of Nazareth takes the revolutionary message of the prophets. And we also will continue trying to change the world and make revolution. Those revolutions failed, but others will come.”
War in paradise: Solentiname and the Sandinista revolution
Ileana Selejan University College London War in paradise: Solentiname and the Sandinista revolution
This article presents a case study of the Solentiname archipelago in Nicaragua theorised as a site for the construction of utopia, an idealised environment where an alternative community was formed during the 1960s and 1970s, in opposition to the Somoza dictatorship (1936–79). The leadership of Ernesto Cardenal led to the creation of an enduring cultural legacy, which was essential to the development of the Sandinista revolutionary movement as well as to sustaining the Sandinista government following the victory in July 1979, particularly during the Contra War (1981–90). Applying art historical analysis, the article investigates how photography contributes to the formation of revolutionary identities, by fulfilling both descriptive and ideological purposes. Despite the scarcity of the surviving visual record from the islands, I argue that photographs of the site were fundamental in establishing the role of the community as a strategic ally for the rising opposition against the Somoza dictatorship. Not only did photography help envision utopia, it equally contributed to situating these hopes in the context of daily realities, resisting the regime. Other forms of art and literature that
developed in Solentiname in the years leading up to the Revolution of 1978–79 further shaped revolutionary identities, as grievances about poverty, inequality and political repression were expressed through egalitarian high–low aesthetics. The case of Solentiname thus serves to open a discussion concerning under-explored cultural alliances within Latin America and beyond, providing a close-up view of localised aesthetic practices seen in relation to transnational solidarity networks, framed by the context of the massive sociopolitical transformations underway during the Cold War.
Landscapes and scenes of daily life constituted otherdominant genres, universal harmony manifest in theextravagant greens, blues and purples, the Garden ofEden restored. In parallel with the development of theSolentiname social utopia, a formal visual imaginaryhence began to take shape. Within this developing bodyofliberation folklore, fact andfiction combined along afluid temporal axis, resulting in a type offiguration thatDavid Craven (2002, 146) has described in the followingterms:‘these paintings were not so much realisticrepresentations ofcampesinolife as they were texturalevocations with visionary overtones of its daily fabric’.Across various artistic practices, we see a reoccurrence offamiliar tropes. Thematically, the manner in which lifein the countryside is represented remains consistent:immersed in nature, miniaturefigures are engaged invarious activities, whether labouring (fishing, tendinganimals and the land) or coming together on festiveoccasions. While thefirst generation of artists such asEduardo Arana, Alejandro Guevara, Miriam and GloriaGuevara, or Olivia Silva introduced subject matterderived from local myth and folklore, with occasionalreference to historical topics, formally they relied upon asmall number of compositional schemes. This can beattributed to the prominence of communal practice overindividual expression,‘models’which, nonetheless,remained pervasive throughout the 1980s asSolentinameprimitivismwas becoming more widelyrecognised.As Craven (2002, 125) has established, the type of‘popular dialogue, or dialogical process’, observed in theparish meetings in Solentiname, led to‘the idea that themaking of art, like the interpretation of key texts, shouldalso be made accessible to the popular classes inNicaragua’. Tested outfirst in the small islandcommunity, this ideological framework was appliedthrough government programmes for what Cardenal(1986, 408), in a statement delivered on 23 April 1982 atUNESCO in Paris, described as the‘democratization ofart and culture’in Nicaragua during the Sandinista1980s. Even before the revolution, however, word ofmouth regarding the progressive practices inSolentiname reached broader communities in LatinAmerica and beyond precisely through the circulation ofobjects produced on the islands. The use ofphotography, which might appear most obvious to thecontemporary reader, was in fact only minimallydeployed. Nicaraguan photographers would haveencountered considerable difficulties in producingindependent, let alone subversive work due tocensorship, working in addition in a context wherematerials and resources were scarce, if not impossible toobtain outside of government commission or of thepress. An exception was Panamanian photographerSandra Eleta, who visited the islands several times,beginning in 1974.A JOURNEY TO SOLENTINAMEPhotographer Sandra Eleta and writer Gloria Guardia,bothPanamanian, undertook thefirst
comprehensivedocumentation of Solentiname in November 1974. Theircollaborative travelogue was published in a book titledCon Ernesto Cardenal: Un viaje a Solentiname(WithErnesto Cardenal: A Journey to Solentiname, 1974).12With aprimitivistalandscape on the cover, showing abirds-eye view of bucolic island topographies outlinedagainst the pale blue lake, the title page opens with asnapshot of Cardenal. Seen together with a group ofpeople, presumably members of the commune who arecarrying new provisions to the house, Cardenal is theonlyfigure in the frame who meets the gaze of thecamera. In the foreground, a man leans a large box ofBelmontcigarettes on his shoulders, pulling the accountback into the immediate present. Guardia’s text followson the next pages, succeeded by the remainder of Eleta’sseries. Viewed alongside, yet independently of theevocative essay, the photographs thus acquire presenceand authority, by-passing a purely illustrative function.Guardia met Cardenal in Panama City in October 1974,through an introduction made by the Nicaraguan poetand literary critic Pablo Antonio Cuadra; thecircumstances surrounding this encounter serve topreface the journey to Nicaragua, motivating the energyand enthusiasm behind it. Although inflected by thecomplimentary tone in her characterisation of Cardenal,Guardia’s account remains mostly reportorial, narratingthe journey in minutely detailed descriptive passages.After a short stay in Managua,‘una gran ciudaddespedazada’(‘a great shattered city’), as Guardiaremarks, ruined during the massive 1972 earthquake, thetravellers head towards the colonial city of Granada(Eleta and Guardia1974, 9).13There they board the ferryto San Carlos together with Cardenal and WilliamAgudelo’s family, who are returning to Nicaragua aftertwo years spent abroad in Colombia and Peru. Anoverland itinerary is chosen‘en nuestro afán es recorrerlas huellas humanas del poeta’(‘in our eagerness torecord the human tracks of the poet’), a clearconfirmation of the way in which the text sets out tofetishise Cardenal’ s character. Guardia and Eleta’sjourney is more than a journalistic incursion, or even asightseeing escapade; rather it resembles a pilgrimage.Part of the travellers’drive is a search for authenticity, adesire to witness and participate in utopia.War in paradise155Downloaded by [Wellesley College], [Ileana Selejan] at 07:54 15 May 2015
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‘Esta hermosa travesía’(‘this beautiful journey’)continues in a small boat, and the groupfinally reachesits destination:‘Estamos en Mancarrón, en la“Comunidad de Solentiname”que se levanta toda ella–minúscula y gigantesca–en la punta de una isla verdey arboleada, donde el amor cosecha revolución’(‘Weare in Mancarrón, in the“Community of Solentiname”which rises–minuscule, yet gigantic–on the tip of agreen, luscious island, where love has sewn revolution’)(Eleta and Guardia1974, 14). Eleta’s seriesfinally picksup here, and the photographs, although succeeding thetext, parallel Guardia’s descriptions of the community.While formally set apart, the text and the series ofimages are interrelated and their meaning is co-dependent and emerges through dialogue. Thenarrative voice thus switches back and forth throughoutGuardia and Eleta’s expedition, careful to record thescene in its smallest detail.Guardia takes the reader inside the main building,LaCasa Grande, which contains the library and the sharedliving quarters, where communal meals and assembliestake place. Several people live in the commune,including Laureano, Elvis and Alejandro, the threeyoung men who contributed to its building from theearliest stages, and Doña Justa, the cook. All men wearthe same‘uniform’, jeans, white cotton shirt and sandals,Guardia tells us, as she quotes a text by William Agudelofrom 1966:‘Aborrezco los vestidos de paño, las camisasalmidonadas y las corbatas. Y ese blue-jean que usaréserá un hábito, la insignia de un monje que vive en elmundo, la ropa humilde despreciada’(‘I hate wool suits,starched shirts and ties. These jeans will become a habit,the emblem of a worldly monk who lives in humble,rejected clothing’) (Eleta and Guardia1974, 15).Eleta’s photographs abound in similar familiar details,capturing the intimacy of the domestic sphere: afarmer’s hat and a pair of work pants (jeans) dry outin the sun, cows graze at the entrance to the church–comical relief perhaps, a type of humourcharacteristically found in rural genre scenes fromBruegel, while still framed by a solemn simplicityreminiscent of Jean-François Millet. Yet thephotographs only reference labour, rather thanportrayingit directly. A sense of tranquillity and easepervades such pastoral scenes of unperturbed earthlydelight. In fact the only labour depicting scene iscaptured inside the artists’studio, where we seeLaureano painting a small balsa woodfigurine, whereFIGURE 1. Sandra Eleta,Juan Agudelo and Ernesto Cardenal in Solentiname, 1974. Reproduced by permission of the author, as printed inCon Ernesto Cardenal: Unviaje a Solentiname(Eleta and Guardia1974). © Sandra Eleta.156I. L. SelejanDownloaded by [Wellesley College], [Ileana Selejan] at 07:54 15 May 2015
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art-making is portrayed as a pleasurable,contemplative activity.Aside from the daily routines, an overall sense ofharmony andjoie de vivrepervades the photographs.A telling image is of Ernesto and Juan Agudelo, agedfive, in a boat (Figure 1). A tightrope bisects theframe, drawing attention to the child’sdistracted,contemplative gaze as they drift along the water.Cardenal seems caught mid-way through a phrase,and we are reminded of a conversation between thetwo–as recounted by Guardia a few pages back–asit took place on the way from San Carlos toSolentiname: Juan enquires about good and evil, theexistence of God, life after death.A photograph of the interior of the guesthouse shows acrucifix hung over an unmade bed, positioned in turnunder the watchful gaze of Che Guevara, whosehaunting effigy, stencilled from the iconic photograph byAlberto Korda, reappears further to the right of theframe. The resting body, its weight still registeredthrough the visible wrinkles in the white sheets, becomesan equivalent for the body of Christ, whose suffering andmartyrdom is placed in direct relation to contemporarysacrifice, and political–ideological struggles for freedomFIGURE 2. Sandra Eleta,Ernesto Cardenal in the Church of Nuestra Señora de Solentiname, 1974. Reproduced by permission of the author, as printed inNostalgiadel futuro, Pintura y Buena Noticia en Solentiname(Cardenal1982). © Sandra Eleta.War in paradise157Downloaded by [Wellesley College], [Ileana Selejan] at 07:54 15 May 2015
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and emancipation, in Cuba, Chile and beyond, as thecollageof posters and revolutionary paraphernalia thatframe the bed seeks to confirm.Guardia’s rich descriptive passages again complementthe photographs:‘Ernesto trabaja en una mesa, dondeestá su máquina de escribir y, a la derecha, tieneanaqueles de madera repletos de libros. Ahí vive él conlos muchachos de la comunidad y la habitación, aparatede la mesa que sirve de escritorio, sólo alberga camas, unlavamanos y una hamaca’(‘Ernesto works at the tablewith his typewriter, to his right are wooden shelves fullof books. He lives in this room with the other men fromthe community, and apart from the table that serves ashis desk, there are beds, a sink, and a hammock’) (Eletaand Guardia1974, 16). All snapshots and narrativefragments converge in the eponymousfigure ofCardenal, the‘cool’wandering monk, spiritual leader,intellectual, humanist, poet and artist.14In afinalsymbolic image, hisfigure dissipates in the bright lightof the day. Ringing the dinner bells, Cardenal calls time,gathering the community, maybe calling for theirspiritual and political awakening too.Scenes from the Church of Nuestra Señora deSolentiname show Cardenal and Laureano performingmass; details from the decoration of the church arevisible in the background (Figure 2). Inspired by pre-Columbian indigenous pictograms found on the islands,Róger Pérez de la Rocha worked with local children
todistil a language of play, plants and animals recognisablefrom their environment, abstracted into signs,metaphors of innocence regained. The islands containeda scattered archaeological record of pre-Columbianhabitation, preserved in pictograms and rock carvings bytribes that had migrated from the Northernmost part ofMesoamerica, settling along the banks of the Great Lake–a source of freshwater and sanctuary of abundantvariety of plant and animal life–during the lastmillennium before the Spanish conquest.15Localartisans had maintained some of the motifs in use, yetan educated awareness of these cultures was for the mostpart lacking. Exchanges between such region-specificand contemporary art practices in Managua are clarifiedthrough formal correspondences with the avant-gardegroupPraxis(active between 1963 and 1972), sinceseveral members of the group, including Pérez de laRocha, employedindigenistasymbols in their abstractcompositions.Pictured in the background of the photograph, thecentral mural in the church depicts the Tree of Life,symbol for knowledge, and of the primordial Gardenof Paradise. The Tree of Life is representative of theideals projected by Cardenal’s group during thisfirstperiod in the life of Solentiname, while still‘underconstruction’. The altarpiece centres on a rectangularrelief made out of stitched metal cut from gasolinetanks, painted red, symbolic of the blood of Christand the Eucharist. Bursting through from the bottomedge of the wall, close to the ground, tendrils reachupwards, gathering in their path the rich diversity ofplant and animal life. Harmoniously coexistent, thehuman element is signified solely through habitationand use in the form of homes andfishing boats.Crowning the composition is a peacock, with its trainfeathers open wide, an early Christian symbol ofParadise and of the plenitude and totality of thecosmos, frequently depicted in association with theTree of Life. The altar stone, barely visible in thisimage, frames the composition in real space andconcentrates the rich content of the murals throughthe repetition of minimalist geometric motifs,markings, patterns of waves and spirals reminiscent ofindigenous carvings from the islands. Bright, saturatedprimary colours dominate, complemented by mildershades of oranges and greens. Gravitating away fromthe centre, the side murals serve to diffuse the overallcosmic allegory. These transitional passages work inparallel to the seating area, where the congregationwould gather. The formal relationship between thevarious murals and decorative registers is reinforcedthrough the consistent colour scheme employed,which further relates the church interior to thesurrounding natural environment, through a sequenceof monochromatic sieve screens that make up themain entrance façade.16Expressed through the architecture and art made inSolentiname during this period, the impact of Cardenal’srevolutionary poetics and spiritual philosophy revealsitself forcefully. While one could argue that Cardenal’svision of the islands was indeed‘romantic’,itnonetheless reflected the broader revolutionary andsocial convictions of its moment. The importance of theartefacts produced on the islands (and here I includeTheGospel in Solentinameand Cardenal’s literary output)resides precisely in their contemporaneous‘constructedness ’, rather than in a search for authenticity. Cardenal’sproject was profoundly ethnographic, his role in thecommunity was as both participant and witness. Ratherthan attempt either to justify or to contest thephilosophical foundations of this project, Solentinamecould perhaps more aptly be interpreted as sign of itstime and
place, a complex ecology of change, groundedin a utopian worldview that sought to nurture thedevelopment of organic cultures in localised, more orless cohesive regions from an ethnically diverse nationalculture.158I. L. SelejanDownloaded by [Wellesley College], [Ileana Selejan] at 07:54 15 May 2015
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Alongside the other accounts, and the objects producedin Solentiname,Con Ernesto Cardenalwas essential todemonstrating the survival of an alternative, resistancecultural movement, rallying support for the anti-Somozastruggle. The almost immediate publication of the bookdraws attention to the urgency of its context, especiallyconsidering the rarity of these‘views’into utopia. Inaddition, Eleta and Guardia’s collaboration should beseen as part of a key period of transition from the photo-essay format to the photobook. During the late 1970sand 1980s, photobooks would become the preferredmedium for independent documentary photographers,and were often employed as rhetorical weaponscirculated across Cold War ideological divides. Whilethe‘golden era’of picture magazines had come to an endin the US (LIFEmagazine folded in 1972 due todiminished readership), in lesser developed mediascapesin the global South, we see the continued proliferation ofpaper-based mass-produced forms of photography(magazines, books, etc.), due to cheap production costand the possibility of wide distribution and of reaching abroader, popular readership.17Violentamente dulce18Solentiname was an important point of convergence forLatin American artists and intellectuals in the yearsleading up to the Sandinista revolution of 1978–79. Ledby the Frente Sandinista, the oppositional movementhad gathered tremendous popular support and keypolitical allies throughout the region. Following hisclandestine visit to the islands in 1976, in solidarity withCardenal, the renowned Argentine writer Julio Cortázarwould write hisfirst short text about Nicaragua,‘Apocalypse in Solentiname’, later published in thevolumeNicaraguan Sketches–a collection of 15 essayswritten between 1976 and 1983 in support of theSandinista revolution. In the story, upon his return toParis, where he was living in exile, Cortázar rediscovers,almost by accident, forgotten pictures from Solentiname:Claudine took the rolls offilm to be developed.One afternoon, walking through the LatinQuarter, I found the receipt in my pocket
andhurried to pick them up–eight rolls–imagessuddenly returning of those paintings inSolentiname. Back in my apartment I checkedthe boxes tofind thefirst slide in the Nicaraguaseries. I remembered that I hadfirst shotErnesto’s mass, the children playing in palmgroves exactly like those in the paintings,children and palm groves and cows against aviolent blue sky and a lake only a bit moreviolently green, or was it the other way around?I put this box into the slide carrousel, knowingthat the paintings would appear near the end ofthe roll. (Cortázar1989, 30)Through snapshots, animated by a slide projector on thewalls of his Parisian apartment, Cortázar revisits thepastoral community as an in-between space, indeed autopia, where that‘primal vision of the world’depictedby local artisans in lush primitivist canvases couldradiate despite, and even if under threat:I almost hated to push the advance button,wanting to linger with each image of thisfragile, tiny island, Solentiname, surrounded bywater and–police, exactly like this boy wassurrounded, this boy I was suddenly seeing,almost without realizing, I had pressed thebutton and there he was, clearly outlined in themiddle distance, his face broad and smooth andfull of astonished disbelief as his body collapsedslowly forward, a dark hole appearing in hisforehead, the officer ’s pistol still indicating thetrajectory of the bullet, and beside him therewere others with submachine guns and ablurred background of houses and trees.(Cortázar1989, 31, emphasis in original)The insertion of the photographic medium as a literarydevice appears earlier in Cortázar’s(1959) short story‘Lasbabas del Diablo’(translated in English as‘Blow-Up’andan important source for Michelangelo Antonioni’s1966film), which is briefly referenced at the beginning of thistext: a closer look, reveals yet another, underlying level ofreality and consciousness, causing a disruption in thenarrativeflow , where the viewer, caught unawares, isthrown in a semi-delirious state. Drifting along mementosof latent yet unrelenting danger–signalling the politicalviolence and instability of Nicaragua–the author’seyetravels beyond to Buenos Aires, then El Salvador, Bolivia,Guatemala and São Paulo. The text was written in April1976, soon after the 24 March coup d'état in Argentina,ushering in the military junta (1976–82), during which itis estimated that up to 30 000 Argentine citizens weredisappeared. Crossed by violence present and past inLatin America, such memories collapse.Apocalypse waited. As anti-Somoza factions weregathering around the country, Cardenal became moreactively involved with the revolutionary movement. Thepeaceful, contemplative resistance movement he hadinitiated in Solentiname turned to armed struggle. InOctober 1977, following an attack on the SomocistaNational Guard headquarters in nearby San Carlos, as partof a nation-wide Sandinista armed campaign, Solentinamesuffered violent retaliation, and an extensive bombingcampaign led to the destruction of the island community.‘La contemplación nos llevó a la revolución’War in paradise159Downloaded by [Wellesley College], [Ileana Selejan] at 07:54 15 May 2015
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(‘contemplation led us to the revolution’), Cardenal wouldcomment that same November, in a letter addressed to theNicaraguan people, published in exile.‘Solentiname teníauna belleza paradisíaca, pero está visto que en Nicaraguano es posible ningún paraíso todavía’(‘Solentiname hadparadisiacal beauty, however, as is seen, no paradise ispossible for now in Nicaragua’)(1977,24–25).Although Cortázar’ s story indeed prophesised the tragicfate of Solentiname, it redeemed it through a‘vision ofradical transformation’to quote Lois Parkinson Zamora(1989, 182). The writer returned to Nicaragua on severaloccasions following the Sandinista victory, and toSolentiname in February 1983. Remembering his tripfrom seven years before, he wrote:‘There’s somethingvery distant about the memory of those days, as ifsomehoweverythingbegan on that date when Ifirst setfoot on the archipelago of Solentiname and entered, insecret and in the middle of the night, the community ofErnesto Cardenal’(Cortázar1989, 110, emphasis inoriginal). Compared to the tragic innuendos of‘Apocalypse in Solentiname’, the tone of the accountshifts radically, and he exclaims:‘Prodigious accelerationof history! Culminating on 19 July 1979, and openingtoday on the vast panorama of a truly popular process,which has already achieved so many tangible successes’(Cortázar1989, 110).Numerous contemporary writers echoed Cortázar’sunshaken, although not necessarily uncritical, support ofthe revolution, also artists and many other intellectualswho participated in the global movement of solidaritywith Nicaragua, determined to end the aggressiveinterference of the US in the region.19The claims werefurther legitimated by the escalation of the Contra War(1981–90), as the Reagan administration was providingmilitary andfinancial support of counter-revolutionary,former National Guard and paramilitary forces. The warwould eventually corrode their idealistic stance.The haunting vision of the young boy in Cortázar’sstory is significant in this sense, symbolic of thecountlessmuchachosorfighters who had becomemartyrs of the revolution. This portrait of a boy agedsomewhere between 10 and 14, a teenager perhaps,histenderyoungskincladinmilitaryattire,wastaken in the reconstructed parish church inSolentiname in 1984 (Figure 3). He stands beside oneof the murals, his head crowned byflowers andleaves: an airplane plunges down through the cloudsFIGURE 3. Larry Towell,A Nicaraguan child soldier stands inside a Catholic church against invading US-backed Contra counter revolutionaries. Solentiname Islands.1984. Reproduced by permission of the author. © Larry Towell, Magnum Photos.160I. L. SelejanDownloaded by [Wellesley College], [Ileana Selejan] at 07:54 15 May 2015
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campesino peasant winnows wheat by hand with a fan and a coconut shell. Solentiname Islands. 1984. Reproduced by permission of theauthor. © Larry Towell, Magnum Photos.War in paradise161Downloaded by [Wellesley College], [Ileana Selejan] at 07:54 15 May 2015
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Yet despite the war, another rhythm, anotherflow seemsto permeate these pictures of life in Solentiname.Although few in number, Towell’s photographs project anostalgia for utopia, a yearning for community and forcommunion with the land in an idealised pre-industrialworld, devoid of war. Due to his far-reaching interest inquestions related to the intersections of conflict, territoryand geography, Towell was perhaps more attuned torecognising the land itself as a major protagonist in suchhigh political stakes. With a large percentage of thepopulation living from agriculture, the implementationof land reforms in Nicaragua had been a majorachievement of the Sandinista government.‘Land makespeople into who they are’, he writes,‘from the landless ofCentral America, to the Palestinians, the Kurds, or theFirst Nations, there is a predictable outcome to theirdispossession. The resultant uprisings are the inevitableoutcome when one's identity is threatened or lost–anidentity which is in the land itself’(Towell2008, 145). Ina scene redolent of Christian symbolism, acampesinoisshown in profile, his arm captured while still inmovement, now covering his face just under the broadbrim of the straw hat (Figure 4). He proceeds with softand elegant gestures, highlighted by the elongatedtrajectory of the winnowed grain. Through theimprovised rectangular frame created at the centre of theimage, the primitivist landscape reveals itself once more.Solentiname represented an exotic landscape andpopulated utopia, equally it was a Garden of Eden and ofearthly delights. By comparison to idyllic depictions inpre-Revolutionary primitivist paintings, or in SandraEleta’s photographs, the islands‘found’by Towell in the1980s were a lost paradise, contaminated by thesurrounding poverty and violence, a documentary stanceforetold by Cortázar’s redeeming, yet eventuallyoverpowered, revolutionary prose. Ultimately the ContraWar provoked an internal political crisis, alongsideeconomic collapse, and major disillusionment in regardto the revolutionary ideals initially presented by theSandinistas. Yet despite its half-mythical and onlypartially documented presence, the memory ofSolentiname endured. To cite Cortázar’s account of hissecond andfinal journey once more:‘in the midst of whatis still poverty and still the tropics, these persistentlytropical tropics, with all their drawbacks and holdoversfrom the past, the exacerbated machismo–This is LatinAmerica in its most torrid zone, Nicaragua as violentlysweet as the sudden sunsets when pink and orange bleedinto velvet green and night descends, fragrant and
dense,thick with tiger eyes’(1989, 110–111).A return to that moment of contemplative dissent; onemight ask whether the presence of utopia, confirmedthrough word and image, was indeed necessary tobolster resistance against the inequality and violentabuse of the dictatorial regime. If Solentiname was asustainable model, then a cultural revolution couldconceivably succeed countrywide. As Diana Sorensen([1987]2011,225) has written,‘Utopian thinkingtranscends the constraints of the present and tries tobuild speculative bridges between critique and vision’.Amore in-depth analysis would reveal perhaps furtherclues as to how the legacy of Solentiname was morespecifically integrated in Cold War visual networks andalliances, especially considering the influence exerted bythe Sandinista movement worldwide, even if during thespan of just one decade. While this article does not seekto evaluate either the achievements or the faults of thisexperiment, it prompts a valuable question, one thatapplies to the broader Central American contextthroughout the Cold War era: to what extent is utopianecessary to sustain revolutionary ideals?
FUNDINGThis work was supported by the Institute of Fine Arts,New York University, the Joan and Stanford AlexanderAward offered by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,and the Harry Ransom Center at the University ofTexas, Austin.NOTES[1] Anastasio‘Tacho’Somoza García came to powerfollowing the 1936 coup against President Juan BautistaSacasa. Leader of the repressive National Guard (GuardiaNacional), the Nicaraguan military and police forcetrained by Marines during the US Marines occupation(1912–33), Somoza also planned the assassination ofrevolutionary leader Augusto César Sandino in 1934–thefigure who would later inspire the Sandinistamovement. Once uncontested head of state, Somozasolidified his power and influence through military force,leading to his assassination in September 1956 byRigoberto López Pérez, a Nicaraguan poet. He wassucceeded by his two sons, Luis Somoza Debayle (1956–67) and Anastasio‘Tachito’Somoza Debayle (1967–79).[2] Examples vary from academic sources, to a broader bodyof human rights-focused literature, photobooks andcollections of poetry. David Craven’s(1989,2002)significant contributions remain the most comprehensivestudies of contemporary art in Nicaragua. Other recentstudies have addressed the history of the islands,referencing the types of art produced there, as well as therelationship between aesthetics and national and/orregional identity, yet primarily from an anthropological,ethnographic perspective. See Field (1995,1999).[3] Cardenal moved to Solentiname in February of 1966,together with William Agudelo and Carlos Alberto
