Enrique Gómez Carrillo, un viaje a las trincheras (1914-1915)

Abstract

The Guatemalan writer Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1837-1921), a renowned traveler and diplomat, produced an important body of work, which brought together news chronicles about the Parisian life, the intellectual world of the Belle Époque and his journeys to the East. However, we also encounter an important production of war chronicles published in Spanish and French from the beginning of World War I. As a matter of fact, the writer went to the war front along with a group of journalists from different neutral countries. His goal was to inform of the atrocities, the devastation and to report war victims’ testimonies. In this article, we propose to analyze the narrative strategies that were used by the columnist, so as to study in what way it brought a particular and personal perspective on the armed conflict that was setting Europe ablaze. We will thus examine the strategies specific to the travel stories that were used in the chronicles and that carried his narration beyond the status of reporting in order to give an intimate vision of the disaster and the horror.