ࡱ> c jbjbSS 11I]RRRR844R[6`(......6666666,79LF6.....F6.( ......&..6.6.b.66,ORR,6 INTRODUCTION Born in Barcelona in 1935, Luis Goytisolo is widely recognized as one of the most respected contemporary writers in Spain. His work is routinely discussed in the literary histories written since the mid-1970s. He is a very active author who has penned novels, essays, newspaper editorials, criticism, a play (not yet staged), and travelogues. Antagona is arguably his most important work, although he won the National Prize for Literature in 1992 for Estatua con palomas, a novel which shares many of Antagonas themes. As a further indication of the recognition of his importance as a writer, Goytisolo was inducted into the Real Academia Espaola in January, 1995. Goytisolo has sometimes been included as one of the younger novelists in the well-known Generacin de medio siglo in Spain which includes his brother, Juan Goytisolo, Rafael Snchez Ferlosio, Antonio Lpez Salinas, Juan Mars, Juan Garca Hortelano, J.M. Caballero Bonald, and others. These authors have in common that they were personally marked by the effects of the Spanish civil war and its aftermath. As children and adolescents they were educated to accept the interpretation of Spains superiority and glorious history as propagated by the Franco regime. In the postwar years, social, religious, and political institutions combined their efforts to produce an exalted image of a country fulfilling its Catholic destiny. That image, however, could not be sustained when, in the mid-fifties, the country began to reconnect with the outside world. This group of writers observed Spains internal problems, looked at the world beyond its borders, and realized how underdeveloped the nation was, both economically and intellectually. Disillusioned and angered by the deceptions and flagrant hypocrisy practiced by the State, they struck out at Spains ruling powers through their literary efforts and clandestine political activities in the hope of effecting positive social change. The aesthetic impact of these authors, both as a group and as individuals, has been substantial since the mid-1950s. It is within the general historical and literary context of the late 1950s and early 1960s that Luis Goytisolo began to write his novels. Despite early interviews in which he adamantly supported the idea of politically compromised literature, and even though he was certainly influenced by the many social, political, and cultural forces active in those formative decades, his narrative never conformed to the pattern of the social realist novel that was popular at the time. In fact, his earliest novels, Las afueras (1958), Las mismas palabras (1962), and even Recuento (1973), were often initially misunderstood or con-fusing to critics because they attempted to judge them according to the criteria of social realism. Goytisolos work has always been characterized by a subjective tone and obliquely drawn characters that are representative of broader questions than those of the specific injustices of a given culture, as important as those might be. Las afueras received good reviews and won the Biblioteca Breve prize for Goytisolo in 1958. The novel is comprised of a series of stories relating to individuals of various social and economic levels. The book is held together by its thematic structure which repeats in each chapter the disillusionment of the characters, the emptiness in their lives, and the injustices of the society in which they live. Jos Corrales Egea, in his book La novela espaola actual, noted un carcter unamunista, en la artificiosidad de la construccin, la mezcla confusa de personajes (pues cada uno de ellos desempea papeles distintos aunque bajo un mismo nombre, lo que resulta a veces difcil de seguir por el lector (93). It should be noted that these are not characteristics that would have been attributed to any social realist novel of the same time period. In Las mismas palabras, Goytisolo did employ techniques generally identified with social realism, such as objectivity and a behavioristic style of narration, to portray the characters and their actions. The novel is set in the comfortable middle class of Barcelona and its environs rather than in the more impoverished areas portrayed in Las afueras. The disillusionment of the characters in this case, therefore, does not spring from the harsh limitations of society and poverty, but from their lack of goals and ideals. The author reveals the characters abulia through a proliferation of words, one piled on top of another in a series of empty repetitions. Gonzalo Sobejano charac-terized the theme of emptiness in the novel in this way: En la parte cuarta la inanidad de todos se refleja en ese final no conclusivo donde parece contenido el simbolismo de la obra: nadie realiza nada, nadie consigue nada, nada encuentra acepcin de futuro entre aquellas pala-bras, palabras, palabras (Novela espaola 410). Antagona was begun while Goytisolo was incarcerated for political activities during a four month period in 1960, before Las mismas palabras had been finished, a fact that made the author eager to finish the latter so that he could concentrate his efforts on the former. In the prologue to the second edition of Las mismas palabras, Goytisolo states that his involvement in the new project led to his disinterest in that novel (15). Later, after Las mismas palabras had been published, the reviews led him to realize that he had not achieved his objectives in the work. Rather than the study of group psychology he had intended, it was interpreted as being testimonial in nature, a chronicle of its times, and a denouncement of the culturein short as falling squarely within the social realist model (1516). The author attributes many causes to what he perceives to be the shortcomings of the novel, including the effects of censorship and self-censorship; nevertheless, he recognizes that it contained in embryonic form many of the structures and ideas that would be more fully developed in Antagona (17, 19). In an interview with Julio Ortega that appears in the earliest monograph to direct itself toward an examination of Antagona in its entirety, El cosmos de Antagona, the interviewer commented on the fact that, contrary to what one might expect from the first of four volumes, Recuento appeared to be, rather than the tip of the iceberg, the iceberg itself. In addition, he asked the author how the reader should approach the work. Could each volume be read autonomously or should it be read as a whole? Goytisolos reply amounts to a summary of Antagona: Est claro que Antagona es un todo y que la relativa lectura autnoma de sus partes es fruto de un planteamiento editorial ms que literario (). Y si Recuento puede parecer el iceberg mismo, como dices, es porque, efec-tivamente, constituye la referencia real del resto. Es la biografa de un hombre, narrada en tercera persona, que en las ltimas pginas se entrega a sus primeras experiencias literarias. Estas experiencias, de hecho, suponen un cambio dentro del propio Recuento, porque no corresponden a un relato sobre Ral sino a lo que Ral escribe. Es decir: Los verdes empieza ya en Recuento. Las divisiones entre cada una de las partes no son nunca a rajatabla. Para poner mayor nfasis en ello, incluso me permito repetir fragmentos. El comienzo del Aquiles y el de Teora, por ejemplo, son casi idnticos. Avisos al lector, pequeos toques de atencin. () Los verdes nos ofrece la vida cotidiana de ese hombre que ya escribe, mezclada a sus notas, a sus recuerdos, a sus sueos, a sus textos. El Aquiles es el libro que tal vez desorienta ms al principio, porque, en apariencia, poco tiene que ver con nuestro protagonista: el relator ya no es Ral, ni en tercera persona ni en primera, sino una antigua amante y prima lejana, Matilde, que nos da su propia imagen del mundo de Ral que asume las experiencias de Recuento, sus experiencias literarias de Los verdes y los elementos incorporados durante ese tiempo a travs de su relacin con Matilde. Y todo eso lo reelabora, lo reestructura, y el producto final es Teora del conocimiento. (143144) According to the author, the title, Antagona, refers to:la permanente oposicin de la existencia respecto a la nada. A la pugna que sostiene LO QUE ES para definirse respecto a LO QUE NO ES (Notas). I would add to this quote somewhat, noting that the struggle sustains what is with respect to what is not, but could be. In order to explore the mechanics and the effects of such an opposition, Antagona portrays the development of an individual human consciousness and its struggle to counter the power of nothingness through the energy generated by the awareness of life as a process and as possibilities, some of which will be acted upon and some of which will not. That energy fuels the creative impulse, the force that insures the survival of the species. As Goytisolo follows the cycles inherent in the development of consciousness, he actively communicates, by example, a theory of knowledge, the substance of which emerges through his use of images, structures, and references to theories and philosophies from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present. The four volumes of Antagona appeared over an 18 year time span. Recuento was originally published in Mexico in 1973 to avoid the censorship of the Franco regime; it appeared in Spain in 1975. It was followed by Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar (1976), La clera de Aquiles (1979), and Teora del conocimiento (1981). Although they were first published separately, the four volumes are completely interrelated and together form a novel whose themes and scope are of epic proportions. Antagona has attracted the interest of many critics of Spanish literature, beginning with the appearance of Recuento. Although the majority of the articles and essays have dealt with one volume of the text, a few do look at it as a whole, usually focusing on one narrative element, such as the use of metafiction. There are two books already on this subject: La metaficcin creadora en Antagona de Luis Goytisolo, by Antonio Sobejano-Morn, and Luis Goytisolos Narrative and the Quest for Literary Autonomy, by Andrew M. Sobiesuo. Both studies elucidate the clear importance of the roles of writer and reader in the text and indicate Antagonas status as perhaps the most important example of metafiction in post-war Spanish literature. This study will take issue, however, with Sobiesuos statement that: It (Recuento) ostensibly proposes a novel about nothing, a novel dependent on nothing external to itself and held together only by the strength of its own writing (38). The underlying principle behind this statement is that the theme of Antagona is the inherent metafictionality of the literary enterprise; that is, that language ultimately only refers back to itself, that it has lost its ability to reflect reality, and that authors seek to explore and flaunt the implications of this situation. When Sobiesuo and others speak of autonomy in Goytisolos works, their suggestion is that his goal as a writer is to liberate the text from its traditional referential dependence on external reality: By means of the palabra, he creates an autonomous reality, una realidad nueva, but one that he affirms is ms all entonces de las palabras, de su enunciado escueto. Algo que no est en ellas sino en nosotros, aunque sean ellas, a su vez, las que nos dan realidad a nosotros (Recuento 623). The literary text, (las palabras), is seen as a means of self-fulfillment; the text defines its author. The reality of the author and the reality of the text are fused and none is more real than the other: the only reality is language. (Sobiesuo 41) Throughout this book, I will argue that, while metafiction is an impor-tant narrative tool in Antagona, it is not its raison detre. Metafiction is a device that allows the author, not to distance himself from referentiality, not to close himself within the circle of narrative, but to draw closer to the connections existing between language and other symbols; i.e., to see them from other perspectives in order to return to them their ability to communicate more fully the life experience. In Antagona, Luis Goytisolo has woven an intricate narrative tapestry that inspires the reader to look critically and intuitively at the institutions, icons, and language that are used to express his/her exis-tence on a daily basis and to reconsider their meanings and the limitations they place on the human thought process. Such an exercise reveals not only what life is, in terms of how it is understood and lived, but also all that it is not, but quite easily could have been. The accidents of time, place, culture, and the paths chosen, either consciously or unconsciously, configure our existence. So, within the world of Antagona, the reader should not think just about the opposition of what is to what is not only in terms of life and death. Through its presentation of character, situation, and structure, the text stimulates a consideration of the myriad possibilities of life, some of which are realized and more of which are not acted out, but that still exert an influence over those that are. Goytisolo uses the metaphor of the search for subterranean water in Antagona to underscore the need to recognize the invisible, sometimes irrational, forces available to humans that give added perspective and meaning to everyday surface reality. Through his text, he posits that this ability will allow humankind to reconnect with the rhythms and cycles of the greater living world. Like the dozer in the novel who searches for unseen water above the ground with a forked stick, the protagonist of Antagona is led to appreciate the intuition and other tools that physically and mentally hone in on the vibrations surrounding him so that he may strike water and find whatever treasures life has to offer. Stated briefly, then, Antagona is a theory of knowledge in the sense that Goytisolo understands that concept. In an interview with critic Fernando Valls, Goytisolo explained that, for him, knowledge is an aproximacin a algo (Trayectoria 90). This study takes seriously Goytisolos understanding of knowledge as an approxi-mation to something that one wishes to understand. To that end, Goytisolo incorporates, in a highly conscious and intentional manner, a broad range of devices, structures, and theories into Antagona. He configures his text in such a way that its readers must engage it deliberately and with an awareness of their impact on it. The author has not given us a text that is simply meant to be deciphered (although its complexity can certainly lead one down that garden path). It is meant to be explored and its possible significations augmented by the readers experience so that it is constantly being enlarged upon and seen from different perspectives. The structures and broad symbolism of the novel, rather than its details, make this kinetic interaction in the text possible. Goytisolo has stated that la forma es contenido y no al revs (Las mismas palabras 15). He is not commenting on reality from an observers point of view; he asks the reader to join him as an active subject in an interaction with reality. The structures, images, and themes of this book are placed into movement through their inherent contradictions, oppositions, and harmonies in such a way that they replicate and animate the creative processes that define the life experience for humans. In every respect, Antagona was an ambitious project on the part of its author and continues to be challenging for its readers. We have already referred to Goytisolos synopsis of his novel. For readers who may not have an opportunity to read the entire novel, I would like to enlarge on this brief summary. Recuento tells the story of Ral Ferrer Gaminde from early childhood at the end of the Civil War in the late 1930s to young adulthood in the early 1960s. The first three chapters of Recuento include Rals earliest memories of his family while they are living in the country during the war, and then his school years in Barcelona after it. Chapters IVVI describe Rals university years, his subversive political activities in the communist party, and his military service. The characters presented in this section are Rals companions throughout Recuento and often form the basis of the characters he creates later in Antagona in his role as an author: Leo, the political activist who is eventually broken by his time in jail; Federico, Rals best friend; Adolfo, the aspiring social-realist author; Aurora, his sometime lover; and Nuria, the woman whom Ral eventually marries. In these chapters Ral struggles unsuccessfully to find a balance between the conventional role of the good son studying law in order to be a diplomat, his undercover life as a political activist, and his secret desire to become a writer. The last three chapters of the volume are characterized by a significant complication of the narrative structure that parallels the increasing complexity of the protagonists thought process and psychological maturation. The continuation of Rals activities, poli-tical and personal, are combined with several thematic threads men-tioned in earlier chapters. Rals personal history eventually becomes one level or strand of discourse that is interwoven with various others that address such topics as politics, religion, Barcelonan society, literature, and myth. Each one of these amplifies and plays off the others, thus broadening the multiple fields of signification at work in the text. In Chapter VII the plot includes Rals arrest during a demonstration, his interrogation, subsequent release, and his familys reactions to his situation. The thematic threads include the ambiguities and contradictions of language, literature and its relation to myth and history, and political ideologies. Chapter VIII takes as its temporal reference point Tuesday, December thirteenth. The events past and future to this time swirl around this day which Ral considers to be unlucky. His mood of sadness and frustration reflects the emptiness and impotence he feels as he tries to cope with a multitude of situations in his private life that are consuming his time, energy, and concentration. The deaths of his aged aunt from illness, of Nurias middle-aged father in an accident, of his friends decision to abort a pregnancy (note the various stages of life), and even the death of his pet turtle Achilles in a fire are traumatic events that add to Rals burdensome financial and family responsibilities. In this chapter the overall disintegration of his political and personal associations overwhelms his ability to think and react and submerges him in a immobilizing state of despair. The chaos of his personal life is echoed by the repetition and expansion of the thematic threads already mentioned. First, Ral comes to understand the power that language and ideology have on the formation of the identity of the individual and society. Almost immediately thereafter, however, he loses faith in the ability of any rhetorical structure to adequately convey the ideals it professes. This psychological process leads him to understand that the responses he has chosen to deal with a very complex reality are superficial and simplistic. At this point, his earlier optimism gives way to a cynicism that is reflected in the presentation of history, religion, literature, and politics in the text. The prevailing attitudes regarding these subjects are gradually, but thoroughly, undermined through satire and parody in such a way as to demonstrate their hypocritical, divisive, and destructive effects on society and the individual. In the final chapter, when Ral has all but withdrawn from the communist party, he is arrested. The focal point of the plot is a Sunday mass being performed in the central courtyard of the prison. Goytisolo places an emphasis on the theme of circularityspatially, temporally, and metaphoricallyin order to foreground the flurry of mental activity surrounding Rals immobilized body. As a result of his detention, Ral is given the time and space he needs to come to grips with the frustration and feelings of impotence that have been overwhelming him. From this pivotal experience, he will eventually find the will to begin his journey as an author, taking as his point of departure the notes he makes for a novel on toilet paper while in prison. For three years after his release, however, he fulfills his family obligations, accepting a job as an attorney, marrying and having a son, and caring for his father in his final illness. At the end of the volume, Ral and Nuria go to Rosas in an attempt to save their floundering marriage. Ral also uses the trip to return to the novel he began in prison. The narrative voice changes from third to first person in the final pages of Recuento as Ral begins the process of writing. When compared to Recuento, Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar has little plot to speak of. The volume deals with a married couples six day stay in Rosas, on the Costa Brava. If one has not read Recuento, the narrator, apart from his role as an author, is unidentifiable. Only once is Rals name even mentioned. The Ral and Nuria of Recuento are converted into the Ricardo and Rosa (or Camila) of Los verdes as the author begins to transform the personal details of his existence into the referents to be used as he writes. The couple interacts with a series of characters, some of whom they know from their life in Barcelona and some of whom are native to the village. Among these characters are Carlos and Aurea, the owners of the hotel where they are staying, El Grec, a local seaman and eccentric, and Pompeyo, the owner of a yacht on which the various characters meet to drink, talk, and have wild parties. Los verdes is presented as the tentative efforts of an author as he considers the form his novel will take. It is, in effect, a novel in progress, as well as a reflection of and on the creative process and the role of the author within it. The narrative levels intersect and often are indistinguishable from one another. Critic Robert Spires describes it in this way: But as the process unfolds and the focus shifts constantly from Rals context to the novel he is creating, the two worlds become confused; characters from Rals world appear, untransformed, in the novel he is writing, and the fictitious characters from the novel appear in his world (Metafictional Mode 75). The various titled sections which are combined into chapters demonstrate the changes in focus, style, and perspective with which Ral experiments as he explores ways to give form to his ideas. The final chapter, however, is a self-contained unit, a dream-like, mythical voyage to the center of the earth and a subsequent return to reality which symbolically depicts the exploration of the depths of the unconscious. In La clera de Aquiles, the perspective shifts again, this time to Rals cousin, Matilde Moret, whose first person narration raises questions about the ambiguities of interpretation as an integral aspect of knowledge. The different interpretations emanating from the per-spective of the subject of the narration and that of the observer of her text are played against one another as a means of framing a dialogue between Goytisolo and the reader about context, validity, and truth. La clera is divided into three distinct parts of three chapters each. In the first section Matilde relates her efforts to maintain her dominant position in her lesbian love affair with Camila. Camila is living with Matilde but is actively involved in an affair with Roberto. Matilde is determined to undermine the relationship by besieging it. She plots her attack as a general would by trying to control when and where Camila and Roberto are allowed to meet and their correspondence. Her strategy is to manipulate Camila and Roberto in such a way as to destroy the affair from within. She does this, not because she loves Camila, but because she refuses to lose possession of her. If the relationship is to be broken, Matilde wants to be the one who has the power to dismiss her lover. The second section is comprised of an interpolated novel, El Edicto de Miln, narrated in the third person with some first person intrusions. Each chapter of El Edicto presents a different version of basically the same story: the Parisian life of Luca, a young student from Barcelona during the late 1950s. Luca is, in fact, a thinly veiled version of Matilde twenty years earlier. The plot centers around the protagonists friendships and sexual encounters in Paris as she moves between a relationship with Luis (a character based on Ral), a communist revolutionary, Camilo, and Javier (a character based on Matildes husband, Juan Antonio), a wealthy Barcelonan whom she finally marries. The third part of the La clera consists of Matildes thoughts concerning the writing and rereading of El Edicto and her strong reactions to the critics interpretations of it. She especially emphasizes Rals comments and thoughts on fiction and narrative in general. She gives her opinions on a variety of social issues as well as the psychological problems she perceives in Ral, Nuria, her family, and herself. Finally, back in Barcelona, she describes her supposed victory over Camila and Roberto which leads to the survival (more or less) of Matildes relationship with Camila. In the final pages Matilde reviews her current situation and assesses the effects of the summer siege on her personality and relationships. The novel ends as she is considering the final revisions of the book she is writing on her experience. The last volume, Teora del conocimiento, presented as the text Ral was writing at the end of Recuento and in Los verdes, is composed of three, first person narrations. The first, in the form of a diary, is written by a young man, Carlos-hijo (Carlos, Jr.); the second narration purports to be the transcription of recorded notes made by a middle-aged man, Ricardo Echave; and the final one is the recorded testament of a dying old man, supposedly transcribed by his grandson-in-law, Carlos (the father of Carlos-hijo). This part of Antagona is a compendium and transformation of the texts which precede it. Each narrator speaks to his knowledge of the human experience, as he transforms and is transformed by all that has come before him, but from the unique vantage point that each individual represents. The first two chapters take the form of a diary. Carlos, son of Carlos and Aurea in Los verdes, writes on subjects as diverse as the concept of beauty, the psychological effects of bottle-feeding on infants, his parents antagonistic relationship, and his girlfriend, Mariana, and her family. The main subject of his diary, however, is his pseudo-relationship with a neighbor to whom he gives the name Aurea (also his mothers name) who lives in an apartment directly across the street from his own. The window of his bedroom gives him visual access to her apartment. The two develop a routine in which they observe each other in intimate moments. Finally, he makes con-tact with her by phone, but their meeting is frustrated when he learns that the person he just talked to is, in fact, in the Philippines. Logically, there was no way that his conversation with her could have taken place. Chapters IIIVII are narrated by Ricardo, an architect from Barcelona who has abandoned his career and is staying in the small town of Gorgs de la Selva in an attempt to organize the novel he wishes to write. He analyzes his relationship to his cousins, Jaime, Margarita, and Magda, to his brother Joaqun, and to his wife, Rosa. Margarita becomes the focal point of a mystery in Ricardos life. They were lovers before his marriage and continued to share a deep affection. She dies unexpectedly in a car accident, leaving behind a photograph of her bedroom in the familys country estate, Vilasacra, in an envelope with his name on it. Her sister, Magda (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Matilde Moret), insists that Ricardo help her understand what meaning the photograph may have. Ricardos reflec-tions, which never uncover a definite answer, become a stimulus for the text he is writing. Another narrative thread is presented when Carlos (father) brings a copy of his sons diary to Ricardo, asking that he comment on it. Ricardo chooses to give his opinion based on the unities he sees within the text which lead him to believe that it is a preconceived work of fiction rather than a true diary. The father appears to accept Ricardos interpretation, adding that it was strange that young Carlos should write about Aurea, whose real name was Aurora (shades of Recuento), since she had been killed, though young Carlos could not have known about it. Her throat was slashed in a hotel room in Manila (shades of Los verdes). The narrator of the last five chapters is young Carlos great-grandfather. He is narrating what he considers to be his legacy on a tape recorder and has entrusted to Carlos (father) the transcription of his text into written form. Through him we learn that Ricardo has died in a car accident (an event which Ricardo himself imagines in his narration) and that young Carlos has died as the result of an allergic reaction to penicillin (one of his greatest fears). The old man reflects on his life and decides that power is the only reality. Love, sex, possessions, and language all have their roots in the desire for power. He scoffs at his beneficiaries desire for his money, for a mythical treasure, knowing that they value the wrong things. He seeks to pass on to them his reverence for the natural life, for moderation, for a love of good music, and for a recognition of their limitations. He fears that they will fall prey to an artificial society based on el mal gusto que es caracterstico de los tiempos que corren and so never comprehend what is real and value it appro-priately (II 553). In the final pages of the volume, the dying mans perceptions take on dream-like qualities reminiscent of the deep sea voyage in Los verdes. He is presiding over a large banquet. The images in his mind are communicated to others, not only through speech, but also through the reflection of mirrors and projections of film. Young Carlos, el Moro (the old mans nemesis), the dead Aurora, Orpheus, and Lucifer are among those who people his vision. He sees Paradise within them and exhorts them not to be gods, but to create them with the cry, Cread Creadores! (II 592). As he approaches death, he sees life and the possibility of rebirth in mans capacity to create. In the final scene of the novel, the old man has a vision of the coming of the new year. At the moment of his death he feels as if he is soaring into the air, energized and rejuvenated. His death is a resurrection. Antagona begins by focusing on one individual, Ral Ferrer Gaminde, who is circumscribed within a specific time and culture. Then, through him, it progressively widens its scope in order to question the ways in which human beings think about and experience life. Rals point of departure is his recuento, an inventory of the sources which flow together to form the multi-layered human consciousness, both in an individual and in a collective sense. As he writes, his increasing awareness of the processes involved in memory leads him to the realization that the creative potential of humans lies in the ability to perceive, remember, make mental, physical, and emotional connections, interpret, and transform information into thought, feeling, and action. Even more, it is because of the human capacity for memory that the future exists in such a way that thoughts and projections can have an impact on how it develops. Within this context, knowledge becomes the ability to consciously embrace the process by remaining open to it and allowing it to lead the individual beyond the limits of accepted frameworks of thought to different perspectives and understandings. What is learned along the way will be altered constantly by what each moment of life brings in the way of experience and that, in turn, will have a part in shaping the future. Goytisolo has likened the various phases through which the novel passes to those of the journey of a spaceship: the launch, the journey, the orbiting around the destination point, and the shuttle launch toward the other planet (libro2). This metaphor aptly captures in a twentieth century context the metaphor that life is a journey. Metaphors and myths that capture the essence of collective awareness have long since left the heights of Mt. Olympus; they have now expanded to include the universe we see in Star Trek and similar science fictions. Reality is rapidly incorporating as commonplace the imaginative possibilities that now emerge as holograms or that make themselves visible within the context of virtual reality. The simple material elements that combine in response to the push and pull of basic physical and environmental forces to form life have interacted to create the complex manifestations of matter and being that are reality. And humans, in turn, are going beyond their physical and intellectual limitations through the invention of ever more complex toolsrobotics, computers, etc. But inherent in the cycles of progressive complexity is the question of whether our actions will ulti-mately lead to the destruction of culture as we know it and the beginning of a radically new cycle. The same existential tension inspired by the opposition of being and non-being, life and death, is being represented now through models and images whose roots are in our collective past and that will help to shape our future. We are in a period in which the old mythological explanations of the creation of the world and the existential tensions that push life forward are being reevaluated and transformed. At the core of this process is the creative capacity of human beings. In addition to fueling the process that alters reality, it provides a method by which to redirect the power produced by knowledge so that it may actualize the potential of the individual by connecting and integrating him/her into a continuously expanding web of relation-ships. This is what I understand Goytisolo to mean at the end of Teora del conocimiento when the old man exclaims: Cread creadores! (II 592). Every individual possesses unlimited possibili-ties of creativity; but, in order to realize even a part of that potential, there must be engagement with and an openness to the process, including the risks and danger it creates. This study, therefore, posits Antagona to be a working model of creativity in the broadest sense. The model suggests ways of exploring levels or types of perception lying dormant in the systems and structures we have devised to deal with reality and, thereby, to open them up to examination and recon-sideration. If, as I am speculating, the primary achievement of Antagona as a novel is to simulate the awareness of the importance of the individual as a kinetic factor in the creation of reality, then it does so not simply through the mixing of the many variables contained within it (facts, references, characters, plots, themes, genres, points of view, etc.). Its complexity is derived from the ways in which they simultaneously dovetail, contradict, and interconnect with one another on multiple levels. The novel can be envisioned as a kind of free-floating hologram that invites the participation of the reader from the perspective of his/her own context. Superimposition, juxtaposition, simultaneity, inversion, transformation, connectivityall of these words indicate relationships between concepts and structures upon which Goytisolo builds as he joins the reader in the mutual creation of a work that is representative in the truest sense of the complexity of reality. I have already mentioned that Goytisolos approximations to an understanding of reality and the human condition have already inspired many critical studies, including articles, chapters in books, monographs, and dissertations. Given the length and scope of Antagona, it is not surprising that many analyses have been focused on one of the volumes or on a specific element within the narrative rather than the work as a whole. My intention in this book is to foreground certain specific symbols and images in Antagona in order to demonstrate the ways in which the authors use of them as interrelated structures provides a working model of reality as it is experienced, both individually and collectively. I have sought to limit somewhat the ambitious scope of this study by utilizing what might be considered the most salient narrative elements in the text, particularly those that might be noticed by a first-time reader. The characters, narrators, visual images, and most pervasive metaphors (for example, numbers and myths) are points of entry into the dynamic world of meaning beneath the surface of the words. By focusing on some of the parts, I hope to demonstrate the dynamics of the whole so that the reader can then use them as points of departure for his/her own study of the text. Antagona is teeming with narrative elements propelled, often in more than one direction at the same time, by the force of the authors and the readers mutual, though not always convergent, energies as they fill them with life and meaning. In the novel, Goytisolo makes reference to doors, stairways, tunnels, and bridges. They each signify a distinct means by which humans move from one physical, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual space to another. They are also connectors that allow us to move back along the paths from whence we have come, carrying with us knowledge of the spaces where we have been. The narrative elements I have chosen to use in this study should be understood as the doors, stairways, tunnels, and bridges (often all four at once) that connect the author and reader to the text and to each other. They are all critical to an informed reading, but are still some-what arbitrary in that I could easily have chosen many others and achieved similar results. These were the elements that drew me into Antagona and I share what they have taught me here fully realizing that the more one learns, the more there is to know. Finally, this study will consider Antagona not only as a literary object to be analyzed in terms of its narrative elements, but as an interdisciplinary text that actively incorporates concepts and what I can only describe as production models from the sciences, parti-cularly physics and biology, mathematics, and even the occult. Given this approach, some of the sources I have chosen to include in my explication of the text are not those that would normally be expected in a strictly literary analysis. These choices underscore my belief that, in order to participate fully in the reading of this novel, the reader must be predisposed to erase boundaries, to discard the familiar, and to open him/herself up to unusual and often contradictory perspec-tives. Active participation in this text requires a willingness to reconsider and to reconfigure what one considers to be knowledge and its relation to human existence. Since the individual consciousness of Ral Ferrer Gaminde is the locus of the perceptions and experiences that will serve as the referential base for all of Antagona, I will begin this analysis by examining the manner in which Goytisolo recreates the development of that consciousness in Chapter I. The discussion focuses on the manner in which narrative voice is employed in order to distance or bring the reader closer to Rals perspective at key points in his life. The perspectives generated by the use of the narrator in Recuento serve as catalysts and as conduits that foster the connections that will be made between and amongst the structures in the novel as a whole. This chapter also includes a discussion on the nature and processes of memory, both personal and collective. Memory, as the repository of knowledge and identity and the source from which creativity springs, is of fundamental importance in Recuento and throughout Antagona. It is the ultimate referential construct, the real iceberg, to repeat an analogy used earlier in this introduction. Through the presentation of Rals biography the domains of personal and collective memory and the processes that create and transform that memory are explored and made visible to the reader through metaphors, images, and symbols that will be repeated and built upon throughout the rest of the novel. The subject of the second chapter is a review of the most basic forms and divisions of the text (volumes, chapters, sections, etc.) and the numbers and geometric shapes emphasized through them. These configurations have symbolic significance within the novel and provide one of its most basic narrative threads. Goytisolo has made repeated references to the importance of structure to the unity of the novel. It is not surprising, therefore, that he had established clearly in his mind the numerical and geometric relationships upon which the text would be constructed. In previous analyses of the novel by such critics as Ciccarrello, Sobejano-Morn, and Pillado-Miller, the repeti-tion of certain numbers, such as five and nine, have been noted in terms of their impact on the structural divisions within the text and and some of its themes (particularly as they relate to Dantes Commedia). More importantly for the purposes of this study, my many discussions with the author have made it clear that numbers and geometric shapes are much more than abstractions or even just spatial or temporal reference points for him. They are imbued with the magic of symbolism and, as a result, engender many possibilities as to how the various elements of the text may be interconnected so as to pro-duce an infinite number of alternative perspectives and ideas. My analysis will be based on the symbolism of numerology, particularly in the sense that it was understood by the Pythagorean philosophers in ancient Greece. Having delineated the most basic structural and symbolic threads of the novel, I will turn my attention to several key images that create another type of infrastructure in Antagona. Visual imagery that elicits and inspires other, more metaphorical, ways of configuring such basic concepts as identity, reality, time, life, and death are of paramount importance in this novel. Certainly, the idea of what an image does in Antagona is a kinetic one. Images are elements that coalesce to form structures that, in turn, set an array of processes into motion: La imagen como unidad narrativa por excelencia, entendiendo por tal el correlato subjetivo de la accin implcita integralmente estructurada. Esto es: no al modo, por ejemplo, de un monlogo interior magmtico, inestructurado, sino vertebracin, construccin polidimensional, represen-tacin totalizadora de los elementos de diversa ndole presentes en el relato mientras los hechos se suceden y, respecto a los cuales, los actos, palabras y hasta pensamientos del sujeto de ese relato son apenas vislumbres del conjunto, de modo similar a como el yo constituye slo una pequea parcela situada entre los mbitos de la mente. (II 40) This passage from Los verdes speaks to Goytisolos use of images that are related through a multiplicity of interconnecting structures. It also points to the potential they have to push beyond the limits of perception as experienced by the ego and to tap into those far reaches of the mind beyond that which can be observed or proven in any objective way. So, while the experiences and reflections of the narrators serve to make the text accessible to the reader at the level of plot, it is the image, understood in broad terms, that allows him/her to understand the broader implications of lived experience. In Chapter III, the drawings of the Ideal City from Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar and Teora del conocimiento are discussed. This image builds upon the symbolism of numbers and geometric figures and, furthermore, adds to the mix an exploration of the unconscious as it expresses itself in the concrete forms of architecture imposed on a landscape. On the one hand, this image provides the reader with a map of the novel but, more importantly, its description and inter-pretation by the narrator creates a window through which to view the conscious and unconscious forces working to create his understanding of himself and the world. The focus of Chapter IV is an analysis of the four paintings by Velzquez included in Antagona (Las Meninas, Las Hilanderas, Las Lanzas, and Esopo) based on their relation to its narrative structure and themes. Each painting is correlated to a particular volume in the text, but also serves more global functions within the novel as a whole. The fictitious painting entitled La clera de Aquiles will also be included in this discussion since it plays a key role in the compre-hension of that volume and its relation to the broader themes of Antagona. Antagona is a consummately reflective text, in all the various meanings of that word. The author employs reflective processes, such as mirroring and photography, to provide a framework within which to explore human symbolic systems in general. Chapter V, Mirror Images, will address Goytisolos use of reflection as a means to examine the complexities of these systems and the manner in which they reveal the most basic paradoxes to which humans are subject as they seek to acquire knowledge of themselves and the world around them. My intent has been to examine these basic elements of the text in an order that starts with those that are most basic and concrete and proceeding to those that are more abstract and complex. Each, of course, builds on and includes the others in an evolving web that I cannot hope to fully represent here. My hope is that the reader will use the material I have foregrounded in order to draw his/her own comparisons and conclusions. Throughout this study, there will be many references to the use of symbolism, simile and metaphor, irony, parody, and myth. These devices are, of necessity, thoroughly integrated into every aspect of this analysis. In fact, the challenge of this book has made me feel something like Penelope as I have attempted to unravel the novel without cutting any threads that would betray it in significant ways. The specifics of the text are simply tools whose interaction and subsequent transformations are, in a very real sense, the fundamental theme of Antagonaits very raison detre. This analysis seeks, in a limited way, to make visible some of the complex interactions at work within the novel through the examples that I have chosen to foreground.  PAGE 6 Introduction Introduction  PAGE 19 NOTES  L. Goytisolos other principal works of fiction to date are: Las afueras, 1958; Las mismas palabras, 1962; Ojos, crculos, buhos, 1970, Devoraciones, 1976; Fbulas, 1981; Investigaciones de Claudio Mendoza, 1985; La paradoja del ave migratoria, 1987; Estatua con palomas, 1992; Mzungo, 1996; Placer Licuante, 1997; and Escalera hacia el cielo, 1999. See bibliography for editions, publishers, etc.  For a complete explanation of the characteristics of this generation of writers and its evolution, see Pablo Gil Casado, La novela social espaola: 19201971, 2nd ed. (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1973): 17144.  A complete listing of the various editions of Antagona are given in the bibliography. Citations from the novel are drawn from the third edition published by Alfaguara (1998) and are noted in the text by volume and page number.  In Spain, Tuesday the 13th is comparable to Friday the 13th in the United States. There is a folk saying to this effect: Trece y martes, ni te cases ni te embarques. [On Tuesday the 13th, neither marry nor set out on a trip].  The most complete published bibliography concerning Goytisolos works and studies about them has been compiled by Francisco Valls, Para una bibliografa completa de Luis Goytisolo, Antagona 1 (1996): 4771. 6 Tal vez a esa peculiaridad de Antagona, a esa unidad antes estructural que argumental, se daba tambin la peculiaridad de su gestacin. Porque Antagona no brot de una idea. Una idea es como un punto. Pero para trazar una lnea necesitamos dos puntos. Aadamos un tercer punto y tendremos el espacio. Aadamos un cuarto y tendremos el tiempo. Pues bien: Antagona naci a partir de esos cuatro puntos, como un todo articulado ya en las diversas partes que la configuran. Y tras pocos das de intensa concentracin. Me atrevera incluso a decir que sus lneas maestras cristalizaron en cuestin de pocas horas algn da de mayo de 1960. 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