Surrealism and the Supernatural in Roberto Bolaño’s Los detectives salvajes

In Los detectives salvajes, the novel that first brought Roberto Bolaño international recognition, one of the novel’s characters, María Font, expresses her distaste for the name of the fictional poetic movement that is central to much of what happens in the novel. She suggests that instead of realismo visceral a better name for the movement would have been Sección Surrealista Mexicana. María thereby asserts a similarity between the 1920’s French literary/artistic avant-garde movement called Surrealism and realismo visceral. Her assertion is born out by the fact that Bolaño based the fictional realismo visceral on infrarrealismo, a poetic movement in 1970s Mexico that he cofounded and which had much in common with Surrealism. It is not surprising therefore that we should find traces of Surrealism in Los detectives salvajes. The Surrealists were fascinated by what they called the marvelous as well as by its close relative the supernatural. André Breton declared in his Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) that “only the marvelous is beautiful.” The Surrealists found examples of the marvelous in the work of the 19th-century poets Lautréamont and Rimbaud as well as in the trouvaille or chance encounter. These and other manifestations of the marvelous/supernatural, people and events that transcend conventional reality and the limits of a rational understanding of the world are a recurring motif in Los detectives salvajes. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2026 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.] KEYWORDS: Roberto Bolaño, Los