Gómez Carrillo, Enrique (1873–1927)

Enrique Gómez Carrillo (b. 27 February 1873; d. 29 November 1927), Guatemalan chronicler, novelist, and pioneer of modern journalistic reporting. As a child, Gómez Carrillo traveled with his parents to Spain, returning first to San Salvador and then to his birthplace of Guatemala City, where he studied. His mother taught him French at home. As a youth, he wrote for the local papers, praising modernism and severely criticizing the style of such revered Guatemalan writers as José Milla. Rubén Darío helped him travel to Spain, where he published his work in various literary magazines and edited the Madrid daily newspaper El Liberal, helping to modernize the Spanish press. In Paris, where he would reside until his death, he worked as a correspondent for several Latin American and Spanish periodicals. He befriended Paul Verlaine and was Mata Hari's lover. He published Esquisses (1892), Sensaciones de arte (1893), and Del amor, del dolor y del vicio (1898). Gómez Carrillo's legacy is his exquisite prose, the cosmopolitan vision which liberated him from provincialism, and especially the journalistic style of his literary stories.

See alsoJournalism .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Juan Manuel Mendoza, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, estudio crítico-biográfico: Su vida, su obra y su época, 2 vols. (1946).

Alfonso E. Barrientos, Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1973).

Víctor Castillo López, Bibliografía de Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1984).

Additional Bibliography

Bauzá Echevarría, Nellie. Las novellas decadentistas de Enrique Gómez Carrillo. Madrid: Editorial Pliegos, 1999.

Preble-Niemi, Oralia, and Luis A, Jiménez, eds. Ilustres autores guatemaltecos del siglo XIX y XX. Guatemala: Artemis Edinter, 2004.

                            Fernando GonzÁlez Davison