ÐÏࡱá>þÿ ¬®þÿÿÿ¨©ª«ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿì¥Ác ¿›EjbjbðSðS ¨‚š1š1­)F§ÿÿÿÿÿÿ]<<<à à à à 8 D\ |à §`ü ü ($ $ $ $ $ $ Ú¦ܦܦܦܦܦܦ,}¨ôqªL§<$ $ $ $ $ §  Xl@$ $ ü      $ *ˆ<$ <$ Ú¦PH˜ H¬HôH$ Ú¦  º  Ú¦<<Ú¦Ø $V^£µà à N•Ò Ú¦ CHAPTER V Mirror Images The last structural and thematic device to be included in this study is the mirror. The object and the human activities and symbolism associated with it are used throughout Antagonía and mirror images, whether manifested in a concrete (the shadowy reflections in the mirror in Las meninas) or an abstract (structural mirroring) manner, synthesize and bring to fullness the exceedingly varied and complex metaphors that make up the novel. The mirror images employed range in scope from the simple, fleeting glance at a reflected image to the most intense reflection and speculation on the nature of the individual within the universe. The power of the mirror over the human imagination resides in its capacity to make explicit the subject/object relationship examined in the first chapter of this study in terms of the relationship of the various narrators of Antagonía between and amongst themselves. As the old man notes in the banquet scene at the end of Teoría, the one vantage point the individual needs to master in order to be fully able to see the totality is the one that is impossible for him—he cannot see himself seeing himself. Therefore, humans resort to many tricks and illusions, such as Velázquez’ inclusion of himself in Las meninas, in an effort to overcome the blind spot that limits perception and hence control over the locus of the individual in the cosmos. According to Barbara Walker: (…) the ancients attributed mystic powers to any reflective surface, solid or liquid, because the reflection was considered part of the soul. Heavy taboos were laid on the act of disturbing the water into which a person was gazing, because shattering the image meant danger to the soul. Hence the similar taboo on breaking a mirror, now said to bring seven years bad luck. (660) The innermost dwelling place of the essence of the individual, according to myth and religion, is the soul. In Greek myth, mirrors brought danger to the soul. In one myth related to Dionysus, the Titans were able to trap his soul in a mirror and then tear his body to pieces (Walker 660). Later, as Christian mythology evolved, this danger persisted in the idea that werewolves and vampires, supposedly “soulless” individuals, could be identified precisely because they projected no reflection at all in a mirror. This led to the superstitious covering or turning to the wall of mirrors in a house in which someone was dead or dying so that the soul of the dead and the living would not be threatened (Walker 660–661). J.E. Cirlot notes that the mirror has been understood as: (…)a symbol of the imagination—or of consciousness—in its capacity to reflect the formal reality of the visible world. It has also been related to thought, in so far as thought—for Scheler and other philosophers—is the instrument of self-contemplation as well as the the reflection of the universe. This links mirror-symbolism with water as a reflector and with the Narcissus myth: the cosmos appears as a huge Narcissus regarding his own reflections in the human consciousness. Now, the world, as a state of discontinuity affected by the laws of change and substitution, is the agent which projects this quasi-negative, kaleidoscopic image of appearance and disappearance reflected in the mirror. (211) In the end, Cirlot continues, it is the ambivalence of the mirror that most connects man to the symbol. A mirror reflects, but also seems to “contain and absorb” images, thus creating the possibility that images from a far-distant past can reappear, breaking the illusion of the linear temporal order of human existence or even the concept of distances within space: think of the apparition in the mirror of the wicked stepmother in Sleeping Beauty or the breaking of spatial boundaries in Alice Through the Looking Glass (211). All in all, the mirror has come to be associated with both the spiritual and instinctual, Dionysian side of human nature as well as the conscious, Apollonian; within it, the paradoxes of human existence are reflected and magnified. The different types of mirrored reflections function as metaphors for the myriad aspects of knowledge as process in Antagonía. As we have already seen, Goytisolo has used a broad range of visual and graphic images, such as the Velázquez paintings and geometric shapes, to underscore the many ways human beings create mental projections and models that frame their perception of the life experience. The reflective devices used in Antagonía recreate such projections and models. Occasionally they establish relationships of similitude between the object and its reflected image; but more often they are juxtaposed in such a way as to create effects of contrast, satire, or parody, thereby indicating the failure of the model to capture the complexities of reality. Only when iconographic and visual imagery, memory, myth, history, narrative voice, genre, and language work together like multiple, interacting, and constantly moving mirrors can the author hope to emulate similar interactions as they occur in the “real” universe. At this point we return to Goytisolo’s understanding of knowledge as an approach to something, and it is within that context that his use of mirror images must be understood. We have already seen how geometric figures, the drawing of the Ideal City, and the Velázquez paintings fulfill this concept. We now add to the mix mirror images as the point of departure for a discussion of the broader, more theoretical premises that this study considers to be at the core of Antagonía’s theme and purpose. I will proceed by discussing the individual volumes of the novel since each one uses the concept of mirror image in its own way and to different purposes all of which are then combined in the narrative of the old man in Teoría. Recuento Alfred Sargatal is among the critics who have underscored the importance of mirror images in Antagonía, both as a part of its structure and, in the broader sense, as an integral part of the Weltan-schauung created by the text. In his essay, “El juego especular de Antagonía,” he points to the integration of these levels as a sign of the modernity of the text: “(…)ya que es un fiel reflejo, no de la realidad que nos envuelve en el sentido mimético-aristotélico—que por otro lado también lo abarca—, sino de algo que es anterior a ella y la precondiciona, me refiero a las relaciones entre el escritor y la literatura, entre el hombre y el lenguaje” (34–35). Sargatal sees the mirror as the best point of access to Antagonía, but he clarifies his position by stating that he is not speaking of the nineteenth century “espejo en el camino” that characterized Hispanic literature well into the twentieth century, nor of the “broken mirror” used to capture a modernist reality that resisted all attempts to reflect a coherent whole. Neither is he referring to mirrors that deform reality to create certain effects in the reader, as in Valle-Inclán’s “esperpento.” For him, Antagonía is comprised of a system of mirrors: (…) es decir, una serie de espejos móviles, cambiantes, que mantienen entre sí un sistema de relaciones. Por consiguiente, creo que es fundamental para el lector descubrir en Antagonía ese sistema estructurado de relaciones que se establece mediante el juego especular en que consisten las distintas novelas de la tetralogía, así como entre los distintos narradores ficticios de cada una de ellas, las distintas voces, las distintas metáforas, estilos, tonos, escenarios, etc. Esto por encima de las distintas imágenes que puedan reflejarse en cada uno de los espejos, considerado independientemente. Importa, además, por encima de todo, ver el funcionamiento de ese juego especular, puesto que se trata de un juego dinámico de espejos, un juego en el cual corresponde el lector—a cada lector en particular—un papel tan importante como el que pueda tener el propio autor. (35–36) Sargatal stresses that it is through this very serious game that the author achieves a kaleidoscopic vision of all levels of literature and of reality (36). I believe that this study supports Sargatal’s understanding of the text completely. The name of Goytisolo’s game is nothing less than the mirroring of the dynamics and conceptualization of life from the point of view of the developmental cycles inherent in human consciousness. Like all humans, the characters form an understanding of the nature and structure of their existence. Their experiences then bring that understanding into question. At that point, a particular character will undergo a crisis that will lead either to an expansion of his or her understanding, and thus achieve a more comprehensive level of consciousness, or s/he will refuse to relinquish his or her estab-lished structure and thereby incur the (usually) negative conse-quences. The challenge inherent in Antagonía was how best to represent the ever-increasing complexity of this process of struggle and change that are guided, but never totally controlled, by the very few fundamental forces always at work in nature. Goytisolo’s response to this challenge was to utilize different types of mirroring as the novel develops. Structures and images are altered and manipulated so as to represent one aspect or another of the process. The “mirroring” that occurs in Recuento builds on the combined effects of the images and the structures supporting them. Specific images derived from mirrored reflections and photographs are impor-tant elements used in Recuento and throughout Antagonía that at once reinforce and stretch the limits of the structures utilized in the text. The mirror and those objects that serve a similar function, such as the surface of water, eyes, photographs, and portraits, are perhaps the most obvious tools at the disposal of an author who wishes to approach the subject of reflection and its relation to structural frameworks. Given Recuento’s function as the referent for the rest of Antagonía, it is fitting that the few overt references to mirrors and mirror images relate to the concept of identity. In Chapter IX for example, Raúl and Nuria Rivas argue about their mutual infidelities, real and imagined. It is noted that each of them strays from their relationship in an effort to manipulate the emotions of the other; but their brief romantic forays fulfill another function as well. What is achieved through these affairs is a kind of egocentric, one-way reflection: Dicho y hecho y luego cada cual por su lado con sus compromisos, con el buen recuerdo que deja todo amor interrumpido, frustrado antes de que disipe el malentendido en que se ha basado la unión, no tanto compenetra-ción real, como ocasión de que cada yo se exponga ante el otro, se proyecte en el otro como ante un espejo, se contemple en el otro, se estreche en el otro. Antes de terminar por descubrir que el otro era otro, un otro con quien nada tenía en común. (I 515) This type of affair is autoerotic in that it has very little to do with learning about the other person in the relationship and everything to do with projecting an image of oneself for oneself, as in a literal mirror. In Chapter I of this study, we saw a similar dynamic evolve in terms of memory and language in the text. The mirror, however, often projects quite different things to an observer than the subject might wish. This is the case when Raúl, who is remembering a affair with another woman in his group of friends, Nuria Oller, becomes disillusioned by her calculating and cynical nature. Her marriage in ruins, she gloats over the fact that she has managed to use the divorce to ensure her future financial stability: No, no esa clase de cálculo, sino con algo realmente infame en la aviesa victoria de su sonrisa: el divorcio, la seguridad de obtener, según las leyes inglesas, una buena pensión, se había asesorado bien, tenía todos los triunfos en la mano. (Raúl) Contemplaba su desnudez en los espejos, radiante como la diosa de la venganza, sin darse cuenta al parecer, de que, al menos por parte de Raúl, aquella tarde era efectivamente la última. (I 517) In this case, the mirror projects an image of Nuria Oller back to Raúl which serves to crystallize his understanding of her nature. She is happy with her reflected image; in fact, she is triumphant and pleased with her role as the exposed goddess of vengeance. He, on the other hand, is disillusioned by the revelation of her calculating nature and so decides then and there to end the affair. Questions of perception and interpretation are fundamental to any discussion of reflected images. These questions are brought more specifically into play in the scene toward the end of Recuento, when Raúl, his father, and his infant son see themselves as a group in a mirror: Tomó al niño y, ayudado por Raúl, lo sostuvo ante el espejo, mientras el niño contemplaba atónito el desdoblamiento de sus dos servidores, a la vez enfrente y a cada lado, señalando a y apuntando desde, el carácter grotesco de la tercera persona que allí aparecía, sólo enfrente, tal vez la solución al misterio. (I 585–586) In this quote, one aspect of the process which allows us to differentiate between the object and its reflected image is revealed, that of a certain level of intellectual development, a concept later incorporated into the perspectives of the three narrators in Teoría. The child does not understand the operation or sleight of hand involved in mirroring. To him, reality has literally doubled itself. His father and grandfather exist both at his side and in the reflected image. Even stranger is the mirroring of his own face, still a mystery since he does not yet have a sense of self-awareness. Only the development of a sense of self, in the broad Jungian sense in which the ego, that most visible part of ourselves, plays only a small part, will yield the potential for comprehension of the interrelationships reflected in and created by that mirror. The scene is placed within a particularly poignant context, somewhat unusual in this novel which tends toward the intellectual and analytical. Perhaps for this reason it captures the human dilemma with all of its intellectual, psychological, and spiritual ramifications. These characters are caught in the constructive/destructive temporal cycles of the stages of life and awareness. The final effects of this process on the individual are further captured in the mirror of the grandfather’s eyes as he says goodbye to his son and grandson: “Les dijo adiós desde la verja, una concentración de arrugas en torno a los ojos, bajo las cejas blancas, ojos preñados de tarde, cada pupila traspasada de poniente hasta el infinito, con líquenes y ruinas, con lontananzas (I 586). He is at the far gate of life, already reflecting through his eyes (at least in the memory of his son) a return to an integration with other levels of time, place, and physical nature. The reflection of the grandson in the mirror speaks to the world of knowledge yet to be explored within the life experience; the mirror of the grandfather’s eyes speaks to a reconnection with worlds already experienced and perhaps forgotten, but not lost within the framework of this existence; and both are mirrored in the narrative from the perspective of the one who, biologically and perceptually, forms the link between them and their respective moments in the life cycle. The mirror born of Raul’s perspective is converted through his writing into the mirror constituted by his words; that verbal mirror will then find another reflection in the mirror created by the perspective of the reader. If each of these metaphorical mirrors is imagined as being set at varying angles to the others, inevitably the result is the deflection and alteration of the images due to the differing interpretations given to them by the individual. Also, depending on the angle, some images will be captured in the field of reflection and some will fall outside of it; some will be multiplied and others eclipsed, often intentionally, as the mirror is used to hide rather than to reveal aspects of reality. There is repetition, just as we see it so often in Antagonía, but it is never exact. In addition, we may all see the same things, but we inevitably see them differently. Another mirror that appears implicitly in Recuento and to which we have referred on several occasions is the one in Las Meninas. Our previous discussion has indicated its importance, not only to Recuento but to the whole of Antagonía. In his analysis of Las Meninas in The Order of Things, Michel Foucault gives an interpretation of the complex interplay between the subject, the mirror, and the observer in this masterpiece of baroque art that complements Goytisolo’s use of the painting. Foucault begins his book, the subject of which is the processes and forces that create knowledge, with his analysis of Las Meninas because he understands it to exemplify the increasing complexities of repre-sentation, interpretation, composition, and the symbolic interplay of light and shadow that mark the moment in human development when language ceased to serve as a glass through which one observed clearly the object being named and achieved a density and complexity all its own. He observes the system of sight-lines between the artist depicted inside the painting and the real one outside of it, and of the spectators, again, from within and from outside the frame of the work, and he draws the conclusion that “no gaze is stable” because of the angles that deflect and decenter site and vision (5). The fact that we see the painter, and not, perhaps, the subject of the composition of the canvas with its back side to us, is one aspect of the work which speaks to the theme of visibility/invisibility. The artist is, in effect, staring at us, his spectators, as well as at the supposed subject on the invisible (to us) side of that canvas: The spectacle he is observing is thus doubly invisible; first, because it is not represented within the space of the painting, and, second, because it is situated precisely in that blind point, in that essential hiding-place into which our gaze disappears from ourselves at the moment of our actual looking. (4) Yet, this seemingly simple reciprosity of vision between the spectator and the artist “embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints,” because, of course, the painter is not really looking at us, but rather at the model once placed in that spot (4). The spectator is thus displaced and, at the same time, situated in the artist’s gaze. Foucault goes on to describe the effect of light streaming from the window which alternately makes visible or places in shadow the various elements of the composition. The room is lit, but still the subject of the canvas is hidden from us: We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as though in a mirror, we find that we can in fact apprehend nothing of that mirror but its lustreless back. The other side of the psyche. (6) At this point, Foucault points to the hazy outlines of the almost invisible portraits hanging on the wall of the room and to that object, placed significantly in the background, but in the center of the composition—the mirror. He states that the mirror offers us: “at last that enchantment of the double that until now has been denied to us, not only by the distant paintings but also by the light in the foreground with its ironic canvas” (7). In Foucault’s argument, Las Meninas signals the end of the illusion that signs, especially language, are a transparent medium through which humans may see and comprehend reality. For this reason, the mirror plays such a significant role in the painting and in the minds of those who look at it. This mirror, contrary to those in other paintings of its time, does not create a doubled image of the room in which it is placed. Because of the way it is placed in the composition, one should expect this kind of doubling of the interior space of the painting; but, of course, it doesn’t happen. Instead: “Its motionless gaze extends out in front of the picture, into that necessarily invisible region which forms its exterior face, to apprehend the figures arranged in that space” (7–8). The mirror, according to Foucault, rather than a reflector, serves a similar function to the door immediately to its right as we look at the painting. It is an opening, with its own, self-contained light. Like the characters in the mirror, the man at the door is also possibly “an emissary from that evident yet hidden space” (11). But he is “flesh and blood” whereas the other characters are reflected images, a juxta-position underscoring the “oscillation between the interior and the exterior” (11). In this painting representation itself ebbs and flows from all that we see to all that we are not allowed to see on, for us, the blank canvas. The focus of nearly everyone’s gaze in the painting, the monarchs so hazily reflected in the mirror, is perhaps the most unreal element depicted within it. Still, the mirror is “symbolically sovereign:” (…) because of the triple function it fulfills in relation to the picture. For in it there occurs an exact superimposition of the model’s gaze as it is being painted, of the spectator’s as he contemplates the painting, and of the painter’s as he is composing his picture (not the one represented, but the one in front of us which we are discussing). These three “observing” functions come together in a point exterior to the picture; that is, an ideal point in relation to what is represented, but a perfectly real one too, since it is also the starting point which makes representation possible. (15) On the one hand, the reflection of the King and Queen, even if in shadow, restores to view what everyone else in the picture is looking at, but in a broader sense, it “draws into the picture what is intimately foreign to it: the gaze which organized it and the gaze for which it is displayed” (15). Foucault characterizes Las Meninas as the “manifest essence”of representation because within it “the profound invisibility of what one sees is inseparable from the invisibility of the person seeing—despite all mirrors, reflections, imitations, and portraits” (16). The subject, that person who creates the image and of whom it is created, is absent from the painting, a void. But it is a void that opens up representation to be more than just a transparency or a simple reflection. It opens it up to the complex dynamics of reality. Foucault’s interpretation of the interrelationships manifested in Las Meninas gives us a fuller idea of what Goytisolo is doing when he repeats, from many points of view and through several narrative structures, ideas about perspective and interpretation in Antagonía. Reality is posited to be the sum total of those ever-moving perspec-tives and interpretations, all of which are emanating from the one spot that is invisible to the individual—his own consciousness. Paradoxically that is the “void” from which all we know springs, the darkness that allows light to exist for us. Reality is never static, never totally comprehensible, never fully present or visible. It comes from within us as much as from outside of us, an idea that smashes the illusion of the separation of the inner from the outer, the subjective from the objective, as realities distinct from one another and irreconcilable. Reality is all of these perspectives, not one or the other. The use of photographs in the text adds another aspect to this discussion. Photographs have a somewhat paradoxical function in Recuento. Unlike mirrors, which as we have said reflect the ambivalent nature of human existence, the photograph has been understood, at least until lately, as the ultimate form of referentiality and assurance of presence. If something or someone was photographed, then the sub-ject did indeed exist at that place at that point in time. In Antagonía, however, the photographs are used more in the sense of a mirror because they generally indicate absence and the invisible. This rela-tionship with the referent is the most important point of difference that exists between narrative and the photograph. According to Roland Barthes in his book Camera Lucida, while writing is, by nature, fictitious and metaphorical, a photograph is authentification itself, a “certification of presence” (87). Narrative has as its guiding principle the creation of art or communication, but the photograph is pure reference: “what I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject (operator or spectator); it has been here, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, irrefutably present, and yet already deferred” (77). As a consequence of this difference, Barthes speculates that narrative implies an interpretation based on the recognized systems or codes of signification available to the reader. He also believes there are photographs that appeal to those systems for their interpretation; that is, that we understand them based on certain kinds of knowledge because their purpose is to transmit information or communicate something about the human condition. He designates this kind of photograph with the Latin word studium because it represents an engagement (political or otherwise) with a certain theme and because it invites the attention of the reader based on his knowledge and/or his cultural likes and dislikes (41). This category includes photos that have the capacity to transform reality without creating doubles of it. We see directly “through” them to the situation. They are ingenuous because they are calculated to obtain a specific reaction and they are not at all ambiguous in their intention (41). There are several references to this kind of photograph in Recuento, such as the yellowed photos which bear witness to the present generation of the former wealthy lifestyle of their parents and grandparents but do not make them feel in any way connected to that past, or the pornographic pictures of Nuria’s father with his mistress (I 328; I 352). These are examples of the studium effect that guides or even dictates the viewer’s interpretation. There is another category of photographs, however, that Barthes places outside of the normal interpretative systems of signification and that demonstrate the ambiguity of signs. This kind of photo causes a wound because of its capacity to cut through attitudes and systems that might be employed to try to objectify or analyze it. Barthes calls this the “punctum” effect: The punctum, then, is a kind of subtle beyond—as if the image launched desire beyond what it permits us to see: not only toward ‘the rest’ of the nakedness, not only toward the fantasy of a praxis, but toward the absolute excellence of a being, body and soul together. (59) A photograph of this type, like great works of art, functions on the most profound levels of consciousness and the subconscious without words. In effect, it resists efforts at interpretation at the same time that it affects us profoundly. It transgresses our systems of knowledge, yet reveals more to the spectator due to its metonymic quality. It becomes the object it represents, thereby creating a stronger identification of the spectator with it, immobilizing him in a sensory state beyond codes and signs. The key photographs in Recuento are generally references to Raul’s family history, in particular, the hidden part of its history dealing with his mother’s family. They are the proof for him that the people beyond the reach of his conscious memory existed. Raúl, like Goytisolo himself, loses his mother at a very young age when she becomes a victim of the Civil War. Her loss is so painful to the father in Recuento that the family is forbidden to speak of her. This prohibition is taken to the point that the family servant, whose name happens to be that of his mother, Eulalia, changes her name to Eloísa, supposedly to save his father pain. The element of taboo, of course, serves to heighten the child’s awareness of his mother’s absence as he grows and has more unanswered questions about her. Aside from the psychological repercussions on the personal level, which are significant in terms of Raúl’s ability to connect with other people, particularly women (the themes of abandonment and betrayal permeate the whole of Antagonía), the absent figure of the mother acquires mythical proportions as Raúl begins to explore his unquenchable desires to create other realities through writing. She becomes a symbolic mirror reflecting absence rather than presence. Within the novel, she also comes to symbolize the taboo that western civilization has established with respect to the archetypal feminine and its relation to Dionysian chaos, the material essential to the creation of Apollonian structure in its best sense. Since the time of the Greeks the importance of the mythical feminine principle has been undermined and devalued by prevailing social institutions. Of all the mythical material presented throughout the novel, the archetypes of the hero’s journey, the wise old man, and the mother are perhaps the most important to its overall meaning. In Antagonía the journey of the hero is intimately related to the feminine archetype, represented by the image of the mother, whose disappearance converts her into the first and most important objective of the hero’s search; she is the first mythical treasure which must be found before the treasure of the wise old man, wisdom, can finally be attained. Jung indicated that the mother archetype incorporates many aspects, but its two most important manifestations are related to her role as guide and protector on the one hand, and as the devouring mother, the most feared of dragons, on the other. In a somewhat simplistic summary of Recuento and Los verdes, one might say that, as the archetypal hero, Raúl’s desperation with his life, which leads him to the point of a spiritual death, is an example of the effects of the denial of the importance of the feminine archetype and the need to return value to it. The feminine principle, as embodied by the Jungian archetype of the anima, is constituted by the substance and creative power of all that lies below the surface of reality. It is related to chaos, the Dionysian, the instinctual, and the creative force. Its suppression leads to an over-emphasis on the masculine principle, the animus, a state of affairs in which the imperative of reason exalts form, structure, rigidity, and the use of force to maintain control. This over-emphasis is effectively demonstrated by the depiction of the society in which Raúl grows up with its insistence on obedience to the established norms created and enforced through the institutions of the family, education, religion, and politics. In Los verdes, in the “periplo,” the domination of the feminine principle by the masculine is stated by Captain Nemo as he greets his guests on the ship Nautilus: En mi opinión, si me permitís expresarla, dijo una vez se hubieran instalado todos, hay algo más que eso, pues así como el hombre marginó y redujo hace ya milenios el valor de la mujer, hasta hacerla derivar del aprovechamiento de una costilla sobrante, así de forma parecida, procedieron los dioses, arrinconando la memoria de la diosa madre en beneficio de la figura del dios padre. (II 97) Nemo goes on to state that the Oedipus complex as we now understand it is all backwards. It is a false example, a conscious or unconscious veil that we have placed between the problem and ourselves. It is an attempt to hide behind the murder of a father a previous matricide that is lost in the fog of chaos; therefore, the distortion of the myth causes problems (II 97). Given the ironic context in which it is presented, this interpretation should be taken with a grain of salt, but it does express an awareness of the importance of the archetypal feminine that is repeated throughout the novel. Raúl’s ability to question the parameters that he has accepted as defining reality leads him to accept a part of himself he has been repressing. The casting aside of an self-image of himself that did not recognize his absolute need to write allows him to surrender himself to the mythical, watery depths of the subconscious in Los verdes. This process is a necessary phase of his movement toward an enhanced consciousness of his dependence on and participation in the most primal forces and elements of nature. The survival of the crisis involved in leaving behind the familiar structures without yet having new ones to guide him gives him access to a new, as yet undiscovered part of himself that ultimately changes his understanding of himself and the reality of which he is a part. Within this context, the photographs of his mother’s family become important reminders to him of that “other,” unrealized aspect of himself. His memories of his grandmother’s stories and of her trunk full of family pictures, postcards, and letters help him to maintain a connection to that other shadowy world of which he was a part before his mother’s death. The most important picture in Recuento is undeniably the one that closes the volume as Raúl is already using the events of his life as referents for the novel he is writing: Una playa de guijarros, con barcas. Y yo sobre una barca, y ella aguantándome. Apenas se le notaba pero, por la época, el embarazo debía estar ya muy avanzado. Quizá su última foto. Ella miraba a la cámara, sonriendo más con los ojos que con los labios. (I 596) Given its placement as a bridge between the two volumes and the fact that, in the final pages of Recuento, Raúl has already begun restructuring the notes he made while in prison into a novel, the physical support the mother is giving her small child as well as her pregnant state become very symbolic. Her son now feels her support in other ways as he writes; he is a vessel carrying, rather than denying, her life force. He feels her support now through the smile he sees in her eyes. In this description of the mother’s photograph we feel the effect of Barthes’ punctum. Other than the reference to the expression in her eyes, the narrator does not interpret the photograph. He only places it within a certain temporal and spatial context. For him and for the reader it functions on many levels simultaneously, representing a window to a forgotten and longed for infancy and the protection of a mother. It is also symbolic of reintegration with the anima and the creative life force that the feminine represents. Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar In spite of the emphasis in this volume on metafiction and the themes and structure it engenders, the greater part of Los verdes takes place on the other side of Alice’s looking glass, the side that reflects and contains the unconscious and human motivation. In it, we see the transformation of the referents based in a fragmented reality into the constantly mutating and symbolic world of dreams, memory, and myth. Dreams become the mirrors full of incongruous and puzzling reflections of ourselves and others that tempt us to question their significance and relevance to our waking identitiy. Within the world of dreams, any reflected image is, at best, a deflected one and, of necessity, it requires interpretation to be understood, even if only provisionally. Not only can we not arrive at an “objective” interpretation of the image, we can not even verify its existence: Pues, ¿cómo llegar a saberlo a ciencia cierta? ¿Cómo comprobar, si uno sueña o dice soñar en voz alta, que es verdad o no lo es lo que cuentan que ha dicho? (…) ¿Mentía Aurea al fingir que sueña en voz alta o mentía Carlos al asegurar que ella, en pleno sueño, había dicho esto o aquello? ¿Y eran a su vez verdaderos los sueños que Carlos decía haber tenido, tan inconstestables como los de Aurea y no menos maleables así a su cálculo como a sus deseos? (I 623) In this kind of situation, the role of the observer is minimalized because it is difficult to make lists or talk about stable characteristics when one is speaking of dreams. Observations can only be made based on the account given by the agent who, paradoxically, is also an observer in this situation, and on elements from the dream, many of which are quickly forgotten. Whether a dream occurred, how much of it is remembered, and what it may signify are not factual events, subject to corroboration. This lends them to being used, as Carlos and Aurea demonstrate, as manipulative tools when dealing with others. Even when they are honestly reported, they represent the hidden aspects of our own self-image that cannot be fully explained by our-selves or by others. Yet their impact on us and on the reality we create around ourselves and others is very real. The dreams and their inter-pretations are vital, reinforcing, energy producing elements in an on-going power struggle within each individual that often manifests itself in relationships with others. In the section of Los verdes from which the previous quote is drawn, “Diálogo del Afrodita,” Ricardo and his wife Rosa are discus-sing the relationship and personalities of Carlos and Aurea, as individ-uals and as a couple. They are the friends and sometimes confidants of this complicated couple, and witnesses to their love-hate, co-dependent relationship. The narration points to the speculative nature of any understanding of human nature, particularly when it comes to the interrelationships of human beings. The image of ourselves that we project onto others is sometimes all that we loathe and yet fear that we may be, a phenomenon that Jung calls the “shadow.” The fact that the living image stands in front of us after, in a sense, we ourselves have created it, fuels anger and resentment toward another that is really directed at ourselves. According to Jung, until we can recognize our part in this interpretation and accept responsibility for those parts of ourselves that are generating this negative dynamic, we are unable to find the balance of perspectives inherent in a recognition of the forces that produce it. This type of problem is manifested over and over again in the relationships in Antagonía. In Recuento, not only does it occur between people, like Nuria and Raul, or Raul’s father and grandfather, it also exists in society, culture, and ideologies. Whether it be Castille vs. Cataluna, Francoism vs. communism, Catholicism vs. the Moslem faith or atheism, or male vs. female, dualities portrayed as irreconcilable are subject to a process of intense analysis, satire, parody, and, ultimately, destruction. Once again, the emphasis is on the process inherent in these relationships and the energy they produce. The antagonists create a downward spiral of animosity and blindness that results in isolation, desperation, and spiritual and psychological neurosis, if not psychosis. Matilde Moret exemplifies the results of this negative sort of projection which blocks self-knowledge and, therefore, any understanding of the world around her. In Los verdes, Carlos and Aurea, the father and grandfather, and Ricardo and Camila/Rosa are all prototypes of relationships based on reciprocal negative projection. Each person becomes the mirror image the other creates, an image that is ultimately one of the self that is repressed and therefore unrecognized: “Se da el caso, además, de que cada persona tiende a configurar un dispositivo autodestructor a su imagen y semejanza (II 8); and “Reciprocidad del proceso: la preocupación que suscitan en nosotros determinados problemas ajenos puede ser indicio de que tales problemas están ya en nosotros, de que al detectarlos en otros lo que hacemos es simplemente recono-cerlos” (II 54–55). The projection process, if not recognized, is ultimately a way of destroying, not the person who carries our projected negative self-image, but ourselves. If the insistence which Goytisolo places on this process throughout Antagonía is any indication, this is the primary, self-created obstacle that stops humans from actualizing their potential and recognizing their role in the creation of reality. Taking responsibility for and facing that mirror we create in the other is a critical step along the road to self-knowledge. Given the emphasis in Los verdes on negative projection, most of the photographs in this volume are of the studium type. The superficial eroticism of the characters who meet from time to time in bars and on the yacht is echoed by several references to photographs depicting sexual activity which are satirical in tone, partly because of the dead-pan manner in which they are narrated: Cambiar de lugar, de vida, aunque sólo sea por unos días, en un nuevo intento de recuperar las energías perdidas, de perder la esclerosis de los hábitos adquiridos: los principales impulsos del hombre de hoy, (…), que viaja para sacar fotos y tiene chavales para filmarlos y magnetofón para grabar sus primeros balbuceos y, muy de acuerdo con ese contexto de cuenta atrás, una Polaroid para eternizar los sexos conyugales, el pene de él, particularmente tieso ante el objetivo, como todo aquel que se sabe fotografiado, y el volcánico cáliz de la esposa, unida la familia en el legítimo disfrute de semejantes placeres fotogénicos. (I 667) These are the types of images which on some level trivialize and undermine reality as a complex experience. Not only that, but, as this quote demonstrates, the act of being photographed induces the person involved to attempt to project certain attitudes or qualities so that the camera may “see” them and make them visible to an observer. The alienation produced by this posturing is noted in the quote above in the focus on body parts rather than the whole person. It is at this point that we can refer to the definitions of reflection as a combination of doubling back as well as the creation of a similitude, for, as Barthes notes, photography led to the “advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity” (Barthes 12). Furthermore, he speculates that looking at a photograph is “the subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object. I then experience a micro version of death (of parenthesis). I am truly becoming a specter” (Barthes 14). From this perspective, the roles of observer and agent described earlier can also become blurred as we attempt to stand both “within” and “outside” the frame of our identity. Michel Foucault also speaks to the dilemma twentieth century man in particular has faced because he is both the subject and the object of his own investigations of knowledge and the world. Foucault’s argument rests on his understanding of order. For him, order is a fundamental concept associated with knowledge since it creates structure which then determines the manner in which the individual perceives his/her relation to the world. It establishes the “codes of culture” governing language, perception, values, and practices at the foundation of humankind’s empirical and transcendental orders; in short, the prevailing structures determine everything from the percep-tion of the daily routine to the philosophical and theoretical interpre-tations of existence (xx). In between the empirical and the transcendental orders, however, Foucault speculates that a “middle region” exists: This middle region, then, in so far as it makes manifest the modes of being of order, can be posited as the most fundamental of all: anterior to words, perceptions, and gestures, which are then taken to be more or less exact, more or less happy, expressions of it (…); more solid, more archaic, less dubious, always more ‘true’ than the theories that attempt to give those expressions explicit form, exhaustive application, or philosophical foundation. (xxi) Movement in this “middle region,” then, opens up the prevailing codes to question because, like metafiction in literature, it makes them visible to us. That can then lead to the creation of new codes, new ways of viewing the world, and new possibilities of knowledge. This concept can be interpreted as an intellectual corollary to what has been designated elsewhere in this study as the possibilities inherent in chaos, the Dionysian, the subconscious, and the collective unconscious. Following Foucault’s theory, representation, whether verbal or visual, reveals the “codes of culture” that are the basis for man’s perception of the world. These modes of representation throughout history have determined the definition and interpretation of what constitutes knowledge. Beginning in the 19th century, he contends, rationality as the underpinning of systems of knowledge began to falter and representational codes, particularly language, increasingly lost the power to be the transparent medium of reality and truth. In modern thought, therefore, the basis of man’s knowledge resides beyond and outside of representation. The visible is seen to be less the center of being than the invisible. Objects and humans form an “internal space” which becomes exteriorized by representation though never totally captured (239). We intentionally seek to think what, until now, has never been thought. We search into the unconscious and study the meanings behind and beyond words and images. There now exists, due to that schism in perception, humans who study themselves as objects, and who, as knowing subjects, are addressed by the objects of the world around them. The symbolic universe created by humans and constituted by language and images can project an illusion of unity and comprehension of being in time; however, we are also aware of the hypocrisy of that illusion and so we recognize the need to pay attention to the undercurrents of all that is beyond our ability to represent. So photographs become much more than an image that still, on occasion, transmits that transparency of meaning of which both Foucault and Barthes speak. We look for essences, for the spirit, for answers to our own problems within the images we create and perceive. They form visible connections to our past that were unimag-inable not that long ago. They prove that someone connected to us, of whom we have no personal memory, existed, and we examine their faces looking for clues to ourselves. Photographs, of necessity, are defined within the temporal mode of the past. Our autogenic memories, however, can easily make the jump that transforms the person looking at a photograph of a unre-membered grandfather into a prefiguration of an as yet unrea-lized future connected by the present act of observation. In this way, the photograph, like the mirror, holds within it an eternal present created by an interaction of temporal mirror images within the mind of the observer. This mode of perception collapses or superimposes past, present, and future into an expanded image of the self: (…)aquel señor tan señor y tan a la antigua, aquel anciano de aspecto invariablemente severo que fue el abuelo, adustez en modo alguno atempe-rada por el ocre degradado de las fotografías, quién sabe si buscando incluso una similitud no ya en lo moral sino hasta en lo físico con el padre, de igual forma que había buscado una similitud en el historial con Santa Cecilia, una de esas psosesiones que se crean a modo de sede o razón social de la familia, para las generaciones futuras, y que, a uno u otro nivel, consciente o inconscientemente, invirtiendo la relación acaban poseyendo a todos los descendientes(…). (II 30) The observer reads into the photos the decline and disintegration of his family history, a process that demonstrates the power such objects, be they photographs, portraits, or houses, have over an individual’s sense of identity. They create temporal and spatial reflections of the self incorporated into a larger structure that, if maintained, lead the observer to define him/herself by setting standards against which s/he is then constantly making comparisons. In Los verdes, an important mirror image is found in the Ideal City, in the opaque surface of the Lake of the Moon that reflects back to the potential viewer nothing more that his own face. Equally important is that, during the “Periplo,” the surface of the lake found under Granite House has become transparent, allowing the travelers to see through it the starry sky: El centro de la tierra estaba ocupado por aquel lago de aguas límpidas al que todos quisieron asomarse, no tanto reflejo cuanto cristal, lente de aumento a través de la cual eran perfectamente visibles así el conjunto como los detalles del cielo estrellado, un cielo semejante al que uno puede haber contemplado de niño en las noches estivales tumbado boca arriba en el jardín de una casa de campo, una finca como Santa Cecilia, por ejemplo, donde, con la ayuda de unos prismáticos, cabe aproximarse a los planetas, a cada una de las estrellas que configuran las constelaciones(…). (II 102) The image of the child looking at the night sky appears throughout Antagonía and refers back to that period of time when magic imbued words and objects, when mystery lured and fed the imagination rather than terrifying it. It is an image which demonstrates the extent to which humans feel the need to “organize” everything—even the random patterning of stars becomes, through the connecting lines our imagination draws, dragons, bears, lovers, heroes, and monsters. The twinkling light of the stars also speaks to us of time and our perception of its passage. We now know that when the light from a star reaches us, we are seeing that light and the body that projects it as it existed perhaps thousands of millions of years ago: Some quasars are situated at a distance of twelve thousand million years. We see them, then, in the state in which one would have found them twelve thousand million years ago(…). (…) The telescope is a machine that recedes in time. As opposed to historians, who will never be able to contemplate ancient Rome, astrophysicists can truly see the past and observe the stars as they were back then. We see the constellation of Orion just as it was at the end of the Roman Empire. And the galaxy of Andromeda, visible by the naked eye, is an image that is two million years old. If the inhabitants of Andromeda were to contemplate our planet in this moment, they would see it with the same time lag: they would discover the Earth of the first men. (Reeves, LHMB 27–28) As the travelers in “periplo” ponder that sky at the center of the earth filled with the familiar images of arrows, dragons, and bears, they are aware of the fact that they are seeing across time and space and reconnecting with what has existed before them. This inspires them to write down their comments in a book written in before by many others and to read their comments and questions, some of which consider the question of origins. Then the narrator comments that it isn’t God who creates man, but rather man who creates gods, just as it isn’t the author who chooses his themes, but the themes that choose him: (…)una temática y unas formas significativas conformadas tanto por el anudamiento de los trazos conflictivos propios del mundo en que vive nuestro autor, anteriores a él, problemas, esto es, no de orden individual sino colectivo, sea consciente el nivel en que se producen, sea inconsciente, cuanto por los rasgos maestros de la personalidad de ese autor, demonios de cuya singular cópula el autor, nuestro autor, se convierte en único portavoz posible, poseído por ellos más que poseyéndolos, por más que luego sea él quien aparezca ante el mundo como su creador. (II 103–104) In this description of the relationship that exists between an author and his words and themes, it is clear that “simple” representation, or “simple” reflection doesn’t exist. It is, in fact, a very intricate, interactive, and complex process of mirroring that emanates not only from the human involved but from all those themes, images, and objects that find their reflection through him and that act on him as much as he does on them. This is the process Antagonía seeks to emulate and recreate both for and within the reader. Even that process, however, is an analogy for a more basic one. The narrator goes on to speak about the One, that concept that is perfect representation but that cannot exist, and about Chaos, “el todo que precede a lo que no existe, algo hecho añicos desde siempre, el espejo de lo que no se recuerda” (II 104). The artist does not seek to create just to satisfy himself; his is a “necesidad compulsiva, impulso irrefrenable” (II 104). He is no longer the child looking in the water and seeing his own image, calling it god and then forever running after it. He has internalized the need to create that god and is possessed by it so that he must keep repeating the act of creation (II 104–105). The creative impulse is therefore the compelling, driving force of life. No matter what its origin, it is within us and defines what we are and why we do what we do. Without it, the species vanishes from the Earth. La cólera de Aquiles In spite of the fact that La cólera appears to be the “easiest” volume in Antagonía to read and enjoy, it is also in some ways the most difficult to analyze in such a way as to fully capture its complex-ity. Contradiction and paradox are its operative functions. First there is the question of it’s narrator/protagonist. Matilde is the closest thing to a “flesh and blood” character that one finds in Antagonía, so the reader is quickly engaged and amused by her and her opinions. In spite of Matilde’s digressions, the narration proceeds quickly—a welcome change for many readers after the lengthy intellectual digressions of Recuento and the unformed quality of Los verdes. There also seem to be clear themes emanating from that plot: the reconquest of love lost, and a victory over possible betrayal. Plot, character, theme, and a linear temporal exposition combine to make the reader feel comfortable in Matilde’s world. But at second glance, that level of comfort is undermined by a series of embedded perspec-tives and structures that add great depth and complexity to this text. As the key to the city of Breda in Las Lanzas is the central focal point in that painting, so the mirrored structure in La cólera is the key to its structural and thematic dynamic. The various levels of the novel interact in a process of constant movement between and amongst the structures of La cólera itself, those of Antagonía as a whole, and those represented by the “real world” of the extra-textual author and reader. Goytisolo’s manipulation of Matilde’s first person narrative serves to create a simultaneous distancing and involvement in the text on the part of the reader that foregrounds the effects of these interactions. Goytisolo first recognizes the “traditional” boundaries separating the world of fiction from that of reality and then begins to erase them by employing narrative strategies that implicitly question their validity. The interaction of perspectives derived from the text’s narrators, authors, and readers (whether real or fictional), and the various interpretations they yield are the important stimuli that create movement within and around the text. For example, as was pointed out in Chapter I of this study, it is traditionally assumed that a third person narrator will be more “objective” and a first person one, more “subjective,” given that the third person stance implies a greater per-ceptual and often temporal distance, and, therefore, potentially yields a more comprehensive interpretation of the narrative at hand. At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, a first-person narrative is often perceived by readers to be more “true,” even if not more objective, since it flows from the subject relating his/her own experi-ences and with the unique interpretation that implies. This is particu-larly the case when the reader is dealing with what is or appears to be an autobiography. In short, in narrative, what is “real” in the sense of objective data is not necessarily perceived as “true” on some level by many readers. Even within a fictional context, biography may be seen as more historically accurate and therefore more aligned with the concept of “reality” in rational terms; but there is a “truth” about autobio-graphy that engages readers in quite a different way, equally “true” on some levels even if the memory of the narrator does not always coincide with historical facts. In part, this is why readers of Recuento come away with a different feeling about Raúl’s life than they do about Matilde’s. Goytisolo uses the differences, often quite subtle, in these narrative structures and perspectives in such a way as to make the reader more conscious of his/her own reaction to them. So, through the heightened participation of the reader in La cólera, Goytisolo is able to engage him/her more fully in the text and at the same time distance him/her from it so that the perspective of being at once “in the frame” and “outside” of it are operating simulta-neously. This, of course, is the mirror corollary to Raúl’s role as author in the novel. As our sense of intimacy with the character, that sense of “knowing” her, is more acute in this volume, likewise her unreliability allows us to stand back from her and judge her in a way that we are not invited to judge Raúl. There are at least three narrative components in La cólera that operate together to reflect back to the reader, first, the strategies that he/she is using to engage the text; and, second, those that Goytisolo as the author is using to engage the reader. They are the use of meta-fiction, Matilde’s unreliability as a narrator, and the embedding of the interpolated novel in the text. Matilde’s narration, as entertaining and informative as it may be, functions, quite obviously, as a nexus or point of engagement between author and reader. Neither she nor the details of her life are really important except (and it is a big “except”) that they create a multi-leveled dialogue between the author and the reader about a process that results in the text mirroring the reader back to him/herself as s/he learns from that constantly moving and changing image. Given this overview, let us examine La cólera’s structures in more detail. The metafictional aspects of Antagonía, both in terms of theme and structure, have been well demonstrated and explained by several prominent critics of Spanish literature, such as David Herzberger, Antonio Sobejano-Morán, Andrew Sobiesuo, Robert Spires, and Lisa Bonee Arbués. Since I have been referring to the various roles that metafiction plays throughout Antagonía, and because it has a particular effect on an understanding of the reflective nature of La cólera, I would like to review at this point the findings of Robert Spires in his book, Beyond the Metafictional Mode as they are quite succinct and speak to issues of importance here. In the part of his study that addresses Antagonía, Spires clearly delineates the role of each of its four constituent parts as phases of the metafictional endeavor of the author. Recuento, according to Spires, is the first post-war Spanish novel that may be classified as completely auto-referential. It represents the act of writing in that, within it, the extra-textual referents of Raúl Ferrer Gaminde’s life become fictionalized in his own writing. From the point of view of the reader, in Los verdes, Raúl’s two worlds, the fictional and the real, become confused and, from the act of writing witnessed in Recuento, we pass to the act of narration in which the fictional author, without success, tries to clarify the confusion existing between the context of the author and that of the text he is writing. It is impossible, however, for the author or his reader to establish clearly the lines separating the various levels of the text; because of that, the only reality effectively demonstrated by the text is the act of narration itself. The conclusion to be drawn is that what is narrated is always a fiction regardless of the nature of its referent, a concept which significantly undermines the traditional boundaries between reality and fiction (76). In La cólera de Aquiles, Spires continues, Goytisolo foregrounds the act of reading: “In fact the novel presents writing as merely the graphic response to a reading. And since the response is similar to but always distinct from the text to which it is responding, the relationship reading-writing is based on a structure of differences” (76). Goytisolo employs narrative strategies that exacerbate the distance between sign and signified, thereby placing the power of interpretation of the text (at the level in which Matilde is its author and narrator) in the hands of the reader. On that level, Spires says, “the original text fades behind the interpretative ones” because of Matilde’s unreliability. Her readings of the letters between Camila and Roberto and of her own novel raise many questions about the interpretive processes surrounding a text (76). Spires cites many examples of Matilde’s interpretations which seem “forced” to the reader, including the one in which, upon reading Camila’s reference to her as a “whale,” she decides that Camila is speaking of her passionate love-making rather than her physical form: Whether a question of Matilde’s mistaken self-image, her attempt to deceive her text addressee, Camila’s spitefulness, or any number of other possibilities, the convention attributing incontestable truth to certain utterances in fiction is now challenged. What initially was read as a statement of fact now must be reread as an opinion subject to multiple interpretations. And if the implication is followed to its next logical step, that all writing is but the graphic response of a reading of what preceded it, it becomes clear that infallible authority in all fiction is but an illusion, an arbitrary convention. With this in view, Matilde’s “unreliability” as a narrator (in the Wayne Booth sense of the word) functions as a sign suggesting that the very concept of reliability is in fact a contradiction inherent in language, which seems to indicate presence when it fact it marks absence. (98–99) The interpolated novel, “El Edicto de Milan,” allows Goytisolo to make his point about the inherent ambiguities of interpretation yet again. As Spires notes: “La cólera de Aquiles is not only a game exposed as merely a game, but also an aesthetic experience based on illusion” (104). The erasure of the illusion inherent in drawing back the veils of narrative to reveal Matilde behind Lucía and, ultimately, Goytisolo behind Matilde, is an essential part of the game. The author erases, but does not eradicate the lines between degrees of fiction and reality, thus exposing them all the more clearly to the reader’s view. In the final analysis, fiction is a sign of the absence of reality, but that is a concept also “directly related to the concept of reading: every work of fiction is merely the response to another work, another link in a chain of differences created by a futile but dynamic search for the ultimate fusion of language and reality, of art and existence” (104). Arriving at a composite reading of this intricate text which directs many messages to many different readers operating simultaneously on different levels is, to say the least, difficult. As Spires says, the novel is “the reading of a reading of a reading” as “the respective worlds of the fictive author and of the story are not merely violated but literally ingested by the world of the reader” (106). Finally, Spires understands Teoría del conocimiento as an example of a type of text that creates the illusion that the product (the story) precedes the process (the act of narrating) because it presents three unfinished texts of which two (Ricardo’s and el Viejo’s) are supposedly in an oral form. It is a case of “fiction preceding itself” in a circular process in which each intratextual author helps to complete the work of the other in a mirroring effect in which “the very concept of authorship is reduced to a circle of intratextual borrowing of one author mirroring another,” and in which “fiction remains a potential yet to be realized” (109, 113). It was indicated in previous chapters that La cólera’s themes and structure can be envisioned as a series of interconnecting or superimposed triangles and, at the same time, as a circle. The triangles and circles formed by the relationships of Matilde to her lovers and rivals, to her readers, real and implied, and to her fellow authors, Raúl and Luis Goytisolo, repeat the archetypal relationships involving power, dependence, domination, compromise, and liberation that serve as the interwoven thematic threads of the fabric of Antagonía. The principal flow of energy in the text emanates either directly from Matilde and her perspective on the situations in her narrative or flows around her as those same perspectives create a series of obstacles when the reader cannot reasonably accept her interpretations. The result is a direct contact between Goytisolo and/or Raúl and the reader. In many cases, the connections on several levels are functioning simul-taneously, eliciting superimposed interpretations on the part of the reader. La cólera’s tripartite structure can also be envisioned as a series of mirror images relating to the operations of reading, writing, and interpretation, whether it be of Matilde’s reading of Camila’s correspondence with Ricardo; of the interpolated novel, “El Edicto de Milán”; of Matilde’s interpretation of Raúl’s work and personality and vice versa; or of the reader’s interpretation of all of the above. In La cólera reading is never a straightforward act; it is synonymous with interpretation. Goytisolo has layered this volume in such a way that the reader must actively participate in it and be aware of the roles that the author, narrator, and protagonist are playing in each level. This participation is likewise structured so as to make the reader cognizant of the nature of his/her participation. So the overt use of metafiction in the writing of the text leads the reader to an equally overt process of conscious meta-reading. La cólera, according to Goytisolo, is that part of Antagonía that gives the reader an outside view of Raúl’s world. In addition, Matilde’s character is a catalyst whose lively character portrayal exists in marked contrast to that accorded to the character of Raúl: Y la validez del discurso de Matilde reside no tanto en su espontaneidad cuanto en el contraste entre esa espontaniedad y las conjeturas que tal espontaneidad termina por ir susitando. Y es en este sentido que hay que entender sus tics, sus manías, irrelevantes sólo en apariencia. (LG, in Nolens 29) Her character, her situation, and her narrative, when considered in contrast to those of Raúl, are defined within a framework of irony and inversion that undermine her narrative authority and force the reader to step outside of her projected image of herself and analyze the situation from beyond the frame she offers, and indeed demands, be accepted. This process creates the dissonance between Matilde’s version of what she sees when she looks in the mirror of her words and what the reader sees when s/he looks at her in the same mirror. It also heightens the reader’s awareness of the difference that exists between Raúl’s narrative as a tool in a complicated process of self-reflection, a true individuation process that connects him to reality, and Matilde’s as an exercise in blatant self-justification that isolates her from everyone and everything. The quite traditional narrative technique of utilizing an unreliable narrator has thus afforded Goytisolo the opportunity to open up the discourse surrounding the text to multiple dialogues about differing kinds of knowledge between himself and his characters; between Matilde and Raúl; between Matilde and her own past self, Lucía; and between the reader and all of the above. The multiple dialogues going on simultaneously between the voices in the text lead Alfred Sargatal to the idea that it might be fitting to consider Raúl as the “real” narrative voice, or the author behind the character in La cólera since the undermining of Matilde’s interpretation reveals all the more clearly Raúl’s understanding of the means and purposes of the literary process (38). In this interpretation, then, Raúl is the “hidden” voice behind Matilde, just as Goytisolo is the “hidden” voice behind Raúl. But readers of this volume very quickly see the game of hide and seek, or perhaps “peek-a-boo” is a better analogy, that is being played, for the images of both Raúl and Goytisolo are intentionally made “visible” from time to time as they flash fleetingly before our eyes in the mirror of Matilde’s words. If the reader has some knowledge of Goytisolo’s life, this happens even more frequently, since, as we have seen, autobiographical details abound in Antagonía. The net effect of the use of such details is that the world of the text is quite literally and obviously connected to the real world in the person and life of a very real author who chooses not to efface himself, but rather to use his existence as another connective level. Sargatal’s interpretation is very appealing because it functions on both the structural and thematic levels of the text. At one point, Matilde likens her relationship to Raúl as one of the body and its shadow: Siempre han llamado mi atención estas coincidencias casi de novela rusa, estos puntos de cruce entre su vida y la mía, tan estrechamente ligadas en algunos aspectos como el cuerpo y su sombra. El único problema, en último término, residiría en establecer quién es el cuerpo en cada momento y quién la sombra. (I 334) In La cólera, it is important for the reader to consider at length the question of who is the body and who is the shadow, who is the reflection of whom, because it leads to a revelation of the many forces at work in Antagonía. For example, Matilde is a Moret; she comes from the “hidden” side of Raúl’s family, that of his mother. She shares his same history, but from the “other side” of the family. Given the multi-layered symbolic associations Raúl’s mother and her family generate—aban-donment, rejection, betrayal, taboo, desire, a search for identity and creativity, the creative process, chaos, the hidden sides of the person-ality, etc.—Matilde’s deceptively straightforward character gains incredible complexity as it takes on these associations. If one further considers her as a projection of and from Raúl, she also serves to give the reader a fuller understanding of the forces at work within him. When considered in this way, Matilde the character epitomizes the circular effects provoked by the intentional decentering of focus dis-cussed in the chapter on the Velázquez paintings. Matilde leads us away from Raúl in order to lead us back to him; she exteriorizes his hidden inner nature; but the process involved in that movement significantly broadens the range of perspectives from which we view him and his work, thus enlarging and enriching the intellectual field of play at work in Antagonía as a whole and extending it beyond that limit to the reader and his/her context. On another level, if Matilde is the “shadow” or hidden side of Raúl in terms of her family relationship to him, she also can be seen psychologically to represent his “shadow;” that is, that part of his personality he has had to overcome in order to become a artist. In this respect, it is important to note the humorous tone of this volume. Considering Raúl as the voice behind Matilde leads the reader to interpret her character as a playful, ironic self-parody of the serious, intellectualized, and depersonalized Raúl, thus making it somewhat easier for the reader to see him as more fully human and less mythical, exemplary, and abstract. Matilde’s character ultimately evokes compassion and empathy from the reader because of the subtle balance struck in the reader’s mind between her inner and outer realities, the inner fear and the outward bravado she assumes to defend herself against her own vulnerability. These very human responses speak to sensibilities that influence all our interpretations of reality and which, to this point in Antagonía, have not been incorporated into the novel in any sustained way. Through its imminently human protagonist, for all that she may be exaggeratedly human, the reading of this volume creates a very personal connection with the reader on an emotional level as yet untouched by Raúl’s narration in Recuento or Los verdes, but vital to his narrative purpose. On yet another level, as Spires indicates, her narration is used to place an emphasis on the processes of reading and interpretation. Until this point, Raúl’s narrative has been focused on the process of writing, even if he has considered the interaction of the reader from time to time. In La cólera, Matilde adopts Raúl’s view that the relationship of reading to writing is, again, one of a shadow: “Pues, en definitiva, como bien decía Raúl, el fenómeno de la lectura es la sombra, el negativo, del fenómeno de la escritura” (II 326). The writer seeks to protect the integrity of his text from the assault of the reader in some sense, in the hope that it is written so well that its intent cannot be misunderstood. Still, every writer knows that this type of assault may well occur and Matilde’s readings and misreadings, her interpretations and misinterpretations exemplify the worst fears of the writer who must ultimately abandon his text to the mercy of readers. One particularly comic reference to this type of misreading, even by supposedly informed critics, is Matilde’s diatribe against the infamous Ricardo Burro who dared to harshly criticize “El Edicto de Milán” (II 339–340). This reference represents one of the moments when Goytisolo makes himself “visible” through Matilde’s words and experiences. A literary critic, Richard Burrows, made a similarly superficial criticism about Recuento shortly after its publication. The critic seemed to completely misunderstand almost everything about the novel and particularly challenged the idea that it was innovative in its form. In this case, and by way of parody, Matilde is able to vent her extra-textual author’s wrath against this type of pseudo-criticism and state his opinion on the matter. This is another case of the “con-sabido juego de ocultación/revelación inherente a toda operación literaria, sea en el sentido de la escritura o de la lectura” (Sargatal 43–44). The fact that “El Edicto” is formed by three chapters, each of which narrates a different version of the same story, only serves to underscore the reflective nature of the text and the ambiguities of perspective and interpretation inherent in any narration. “El Edicto” serves as an embedded mirror which, according to Sargatal, simultaneously hides and reveals many aspects of La cólera, and by extension, of Antagonía as a whole: Así, la Lucía protagonista del Edicto de Milán viene a ser, de alguna manera, la encarnación literaria de la Matilde Moret narradora y autoanali-zadora de La cólera de Aquiles, lo mismo que el Luis de aquélla no es sino el Raúl de la última. Y aún podríamos suponer que la lesbiana narradora de La cólera de Aquiles en realidad oculta un nuevo desdoblamiento narrativo de Raúl, desarrollo de sentido inverso al que tiene lugar entre Matilde Moret y Claudio Mendoza. Y finalmente sabemos que tanto Matilde como Raúl revelan/ocultan el propio autor de Antagonía. (44) This last relationship is made clear in the text by Matilde’s oft-quoted statement in the third part of La cólera:: De ahí que cualquier hipotético lector de las presentes líneas pueda concluir a su vez, no menos sagazmente y en virtud del mismo juego de compensaciones, en que mi nombre, Matilde Moret, encubre un varón; cosa, por otra parte, acaso más cierta de lo que a primera vista pueda suponerse. (I 254) Raúl and Goytisolo flash before our eyes in this statement and create a flurry of activity behind the mask of Matilde’s persona. So, once again, the ostensible subject of the text, in this case the first person narrator, has been deflected or displaced from the central focus (no easy task given the strength of Matilde as a character) and because of the way in which the narration is structured, we as readers are forced to peer harder into the series of implicit mirrors in the text to catch glimpses of insight from which to build an understanding of the book and its role in Antagonía. Matilde’s unreliability as a narrator creates the series of angled mirrors that deflect the reader’s gaze from Matilde to Raúl to Goytisolo and back to him/herself. Caught in a kaleidoscope of superimposed narrative gazes, sometimes hidden and sometimes made visible by the structure of the narrative, the reader both witnesses and becomes an active participant in a complex interplay of forces at work in this text. While Raúl’s character represents one type of interiorized mirror within La cólera, a very different type of embedded mirror is formed by Matilde’s interpolated novel, “El Edicto de Milán.” Kathleen Vernon’s article, “Myse en abyme and the Making of Meaning in Luis Goytisolo’s Antagonía,” has already been quoted in this study in reference to the role of the Velázquez paintings. She also speaks to the role of “El Edicto de Milan,” especially as it relates to its mirroring functions: But it is to another form of diegetic reflexivity that I wish to turn in this essay, to the phenomenon generally known as myse en abyme, a process whereby the central thematic or structural contours of the work in question are reproduced, in miniature as it were, within the text itself. The role of these mirror works may vary from case to case, but there are certain common features that must be accounted for. Goytisolo’s appropriation of this metafictional technique, like his use of other self-reflexive devices, is marked by unusual density of intratextual and extratextual reflections. These mirrorings are most notorious in(…)La cólera de Aquiles(…). (230) Vernon notes that in La cólera the “mirrorings” include; 1) Matilde’s reading of her novel, “El Edicto de Milan”; 2) the existence of “the novel within the novel within the novel, La Batalla del Puente Milvio, whose title offers a reference to Constantine and the Edict of Milan and the name of whose author, Claudio Sainz de la Mora, offers an anagramatic revision of the pseudonymous author of ‘El Edicto” ; the naming of the volume after the fictitious painting described by Matilde within it; and, finally, a reading of this volume as “an interior reflection” of Antagonía as a whole (230). On this last point, although she does not go into detail, Vernon speculates on the “effect of the embedding of visual within verbal art” (238). Mise en abyme, mirror reflection but reflection “en situation,” in Sartrean terms, by inserting one work into another, similar but not identical—and all the more evident in the case of two different media, painting and novel, for example—offers a reflection of the literary act itself. Mise en abyme dramatizes the search for, and the creation of meaning, the source of the frustrations inherent in the activities that are writing and reading(…). Ultimately this and other specular structures in the tetralogy operate to mirror the form and function of the work as well as its contents. Antagonía’s reflexive, recapitulatory character dynamizes the tension between the impossibility of mimetic reproduction and the risks of mere narcissistic self-reflection. Nevertheless, this mirror work pretends to offer us an instrument of knowledge, where looking at ourselves, we see the world around us, and coming to see the world, we come to see and know ourselves. (239) Matilde demands that the reader accept the mask she presents as being herself as well as the mask-like projections of all she sees. The projections cast onto the characters of Camila, Roberto, her servants or society at large, however, only mirror back to the reader all her anxieties—her insecurities, her social ineptness, her fear of a loveless and isolated existence. From the point of view of the reader, the images created by the mirror of Matilde’s perspective are themselves in a constant state of refraction, oscillating between her image of herself and the image the rest of the world has of her. Matilde exists as an absolute counterpoint to Raúl as an author. She insists that her words be accepted without reservation as “true.” She wants to eliminate any context but the one she thinks she is creating with her narrative, in an attempt to assure that the reader accepts her interpretation. Her work deals with a superficial reality based on personal events passed through the filter of a very personalized interpretation; in other words, everything Raúl hopes to avoid in his own writing. Raúl criticizes her work as he did that of Aldofo Cuadras in Recuento for its inability to be much more than an personal diary without literary worth, a kind of roman a clé which could only interest a few friends who know the events and people who are the subject of the book (I 326; II 272). Raul’s opinion wounds her deeply because she understands on some level that he knows more than she does about almost everything. He is the “dios ante su diosa,” whose aura proclaims his artistic difference, his ability to transcend reality through words (II 334). The character of Raúl was sometimes used as a mirror or a camera lens in his biography, and he again assumes that role in La cólera. Considered as a character in Matilde’s narration, he is included in the background, but is nevertheless central to an understanding of Matilde’s self-deception. Raul’s inclusion in this text fulfills the function of Velázquez’ mirror within the frame of Matilde’s narration. He is the reference point existing outside the portrait, but forming an integral part of it since he is the focal point of her gaze. He is also her “lector privilegiado,” and therefore the continued subject of our gaze as well since she talks about him so much, especially in the third part of the volume. Matilde states that Raúl believes that “todo autor siempre escribe sobre sí mismo” (II 283). Given the context just described, the reader needs to take this concept to its logical ends. Matilde is an aspect of Raúl who is an aspect of Luis Goytisolo. As we invert the process to discuss the role of the reader, then it must be realized that “every reader reads about him/herself.” We identify with certain situations and certain characters because they represent aspects of ourselves. The way this process manifests itself in the writing or the reading of the book is only a metaphor of the ways it manifests itself in the processes that are knowledge and life. Each person or culture’s system of sympathies and aversions mirrors back to it important information that can be used to understand the interconnections of our individual and collective characters. This statement leads me to stress again at this point that, in Antagonía, there is a constant undermining of the reader’s normal tendency to accept as truth those things that are written until they are flagrantly disproved. As has been stated before, this type of subversion represents a challenge to the line of philosophical thought that has held that reason, logic, and objectivity were the only roads to truth. In this vein, the earlier reference made to Foucault’s theory that narrative representation has lost the ability to be the transparent medium of reality and truth in modern times is germane to our argument and adds another layer of meaning to the contradictions inherent in language pointed out by Spires. According to Foucault, there is no longer such a thing as a discourse that can be said to carry within it the inherent value of truth. While we might wish to establish an analytic language that would have its foundation in what is “true” for the subject ant that would also enable us to capture the perspective of ourselves from the outside, the language we have created now imprisons us within its ambiguities and is not likely to help us establish the kind of order we desire (321). So we continue to explore all the areas of our existence that cannot be articulated by language except through various forms of analogy. We look for ways to reconnect the language of the unknown to that of the known in an attempt to link the “naive discourse of a truth reduced wholly to the empirical, and the prophetic discourse which with similar naivete promises at last the eventual attainment by man of experience” (321). This is the search for unity that is constantly frustrated by the rupture between humankind and the language it uses to represent itself: “The only thing we know at the moment, in all certainty, is that in Western culture the being of man and the being of language have never, at any time, been able to coexist and to articulate themselves one upon the other. Their incompatibility has been one of the fundamental features of our thought” (339). Apart from its representational nature, another essential aspect of language operative throughout Antagonía is its power. Whether one speaks of the family, religion, education or politics, the force behind any subject or institution is power, and the most effective power is that which can claim to represent the “truth.” In Recuento, this point is clearly made in the depiction and subsequent parodies of the institutions of religion, the family, and politics, all of which use the power of language in similar ways and to similar ends. Nevertheless, Matilde as a character perhaps most directly articulates the relation between power and language through her attempts to use it to dominate her reader and impose her view of the truth on him/her. This “power play” fails in her efforts with the reader as well as in her struggle to control and thereby dominate Camila, but its strategies, uses, abuses, and the desires that motivate it are very clearly portrayed. Matilde equates the power of language with the masculine, reason-oriented side of her nature. She decries “la incontinencia verbal de las mujeres” (II 114). In her mind, language provides her with a “verda-dero órgano penetrante, algo que siempre he echado de menos en mis exaltados momentos de plenitud posesiva” (II 161). She states that she never feels more powerful than when writing: Anécdotas y cotilleos aparte, lo que desde luego nunca me había sucedido es lo de ahora, esa excitación que me entra a veces, susceptible, incluso, de sustituir a la propia realidad, de ocupar su sitio, de no dejar espacio para ella. Esa especie de vibraciones que de reprente la recorren a una, un tipo de sensación de tal intensidad, que en más de un momento me he visto obligada a abandonar la redacción de estas líneas. (II 346) Her words become, quite literally, her reality. Her reaction to being able to represent herself fully is one of orgasmic pleasure. Foucault has described the relationship between power and pleasure by envi-sioning their interaction as a type of spiral. Specifically addressing the power strategies inherent in sexual discourse, he notes a two-fold effect: 1) that in discourses of a sexual nature (as Matilde’s is) there is a sensualization of power; and 2), that pleasure is derived from this process (History of Sexuality 45). In Matilde’s discourse, as in other parts of Antagonía, this effect is clearly described. The cycles of domination and dependence, creation and destruction that are reflec-ted in Matilde’s narration speak of the power of the written word. What is not so clear is who is dominating and who is dependent; who is truly creating and who is being destroyed through the text, perhaps without even realizing it. Just as Achilles’ wrath turned back upon him and destroyed him, so Matilde’s words prefigure her future and that of those who are like her. Teoría del conocimiento Teoría del conocimiento is the volume of Antagonía that is most reflective, in every sense of the word. Within the cycle of Antagonía it exists as Raúl’s projection made by the words of which it is composed. For this reason, mirror images and photographs play an important role within it. As we have seen in our discussion of the other volumes of the novel, the word “reflection” indicates within itself a cycle of activity. The action of a subject becomes concretized in an image or an act that is then returned to him/her, but not always as a “true” or mimetic representation. It may be distorted by any number of variables—light, time, space, conscious or unconscious desires, emotions, memory, or point of view. Within the text of Teoría, Goytisolo will avail himself of all of these variations. This volume begins with what appears to be Carlos-hijo’s diary, later identified by Ricardo as a work of fiction, in effect, as a kind of diary novel (II 462). The basic theme of the narration is the reflection of the individual in the world around him as he struggles to create an identity within it. His writing is a concrete way of projecting an image of himself into the exterior world. Even though he professes to disdain the idea of being thrust into the role of being a published author and having to deal with “las complicidades implícitas, las alianzas y rivalidades propias de ese mundillo”(II 394), he attempts to affirm his identity by achieving a total identification with his work: “Exactamente la situación que yo espero alcanzar: sin posesiones que esclavicen ni el hostigamiento de las urgencias económicas(…). Sin problemas, en una palabra, materiales ni morales, nada que se interponga entre el escritor y su obra” (II 396). Like Matilde, or the early Raúl, he wants his written work to represent him fully, for the book he is writing and his role as an author to fuse, “superponerse.” as he says, so that there is no room for differences between the two (II 394). This type of identification reflects his adolescent need to see reality as a unity wherein the word is a transparent medium allowing the object to communicate its being. Carlos’ preoccupations are typical of his time of life. Sexuality, the ruminations about life and death, youth and old age, body and spirit are the subject matter of his text, but they are always presented in a prescribed way, repeating themes and structures from the literature he has read. He specifically mentions Robinson Crusoe (II 365) and Rousseau (II 367), thus giving the referents for the diary form he employs. He borrows liberally from medieval traditions in the rumination on beauty that begins his narration (II 355–358), the diary, the mystery novel, and Freud, among other influences, as he writes. The use of the diary format allows him to establish a present tense time frame that particularly lends itself to his reflection on a variety of subjects randomly interspersed with events from daily life and his daydreams. In her book, The Diary Novel, Lorna Martens states that the reflective nature of the genre fosters a doubling of the narrator who attempts to recreate himself through his writing, an act that reflects the schism in identity felt by many of the protagonists of the genre. The self that writes does not coincide with the self that is written. This schism is often expressed through the use of metaphors of vision that emphasize the changing reflection of the narrator to himself (15–16). Certainly, this description applies in Carlos’ case. Ricardo comments on the gulf that exists between the author and his protagonist by saying that young Carlos is: “(…)uno de esos chicos silenciosos y de aspecto sensible que resultan más bien pegadizos, con pocos puntos en común, a primera visa, con la imagen que de sí mismo brindaba a través del diario” (II 460). Though still very tied to his mother (he says that his girlfriend Mariana reminds him of her and he names the object of his sexual desire after her in his text), he is determined to create an image of himself as a man capable of attracting and conquering an adult female with sexual experience. The thought that just such a female is watching him makes him very self-conscious of the image he is projecting: “Estuve tentado de mirar hacia arriba, pero me pareció una muestra de debilidad el hacerlo, aparte de que la imagen de una persona mirando hacia una ventana suele resultar minimizante, en razón del desamparo que sugiere, para quien desde allí la contempla” (II 401). Carlos has been absorbed by the mirror; he carries it with him in his head and in the narrative that is always reflecting his image back to him even as he writes it. His extreme self-consciousness affects every aspect of the way in which he views the world. Still, he doesn’t trust himself to faithfully capture the image. At the end of the diary, as he is crossing the street to her apartment (which, by the way, is apartment three on the sixth floor, the same numbers as Raúl’s jail cell), he is thinking how glad he is to have his Swiss tape recorder and that special Japanese camera that takes pictures in the dark with him! He wants proof that this is really happening. Nevertheless, for all its adolescent pretentions, his creation of these projections indicates that he is attempting to push himself into his future adult identity. Psychologically the process serves as a bridge to his future self. In his study of the diary novel, Diary Fiction: Writing as Action, H. Porter Abbott gives a formula repeated in many such books. The four parts of the formula include the setting, action, writer, and the writing. In the case of a male narrator, one may expect him to be at a desk with his writing equipment in a room in a city with a view and a mirror. He writes, paces the room, looks out of the window and into the mirror, walks on the street, has some type of love encounter, and will probably die, often by committing suicide. He is intelligent, sensitive, introverted, self-conscious, and alienated. He is also young, alone, melodramatic, and doomed. He writes intermittently, speaking of his emotions in a choppy, irregular style. The words he uses are themselves self-conscious reflections of their author (15–16). Goytisolo’s adherence to this pattern is uncanny, almost comical. Through the imitative style he employs (even imitating his own style so that Ricardo can comment on it later), he captures the stereotype of this adolescent male on the verge of manhood. The search for Aurea, the need to learn her name, to have her recognize him and to know his name, to meet her in the sanctity of her apartment, and to consummate the sexual act that would define him as the male in opposition to her female are accomplishments that would establish his identity. The frustration he experiences when he finally goes to her apartment and does not find her there reflects his failure to assume that identity. His writing, ultimately, can be seen as an attempt to sublimate that failure, an alternate means to self-creation through action, even if he is copying the styles and structures of others. He is seeing himself in the mirror of the world as it has been given to him, much as Raúl did in the early chapters of Recuento. This brings up another aspect of the reflective nature of this volume, as well as all of Antagonía. In the reference that Ricardo makes to Carlos’ style, one sees the intratextual cycle common to all literature exemplified. Ricardo states that, obviously, Carlos’ writing style has been influenced by Luis Goytisolo: En lo que se refiere al estilo, no es difícil descubrir la huella de Luis Goytisolo: esas largas series de períodos, por ejemplo, esas comparaciones que comienzan con un homérico así como, para acabar empalmando con un así, de modo semejante, no sin antes intercalar nuevas metáforas encabalgadas, metáforas secundarias que más que centrar y precisar la comparación inicial, la expanden y hasta la invierten en sus términos. (II 462) So, Carlos imitates an author (Luis Goytisolo) who created the author (Raúl) who created him (Carlos) and Ricardo, and whom Ricardo now converts into a literary character by placing him within his text (which is also Raúl’s and Goytisolo’s). The cycle, with all its twists and turns, emphasizes the necessary interdependence of the literary act as it questions the boundaries separating reality and fiction. All writing becomes fiction, no matter how “real” the referent, due to the neces-sarily subjective interpretation of the writer. This analogy can and should be taken one step further—this intertextual process is the stuff “real” life and all our interpretations of it are made of. It is impos-sible to define where one starts and the other ends. Reality as opposed to fiction, like the many other supposedly polar opposites presented in the text, is not an irreconcilable duality. Rather than identifying his novel as being either fiction or reality, Goytisolo presents it as fiction AND reality. If we envision Antagonía as a living cell, an analogy made earlier, then its walls must be permeable in order for it to con-tinue to live and engender new cells. Carlos’ diary is an essay, an experimentation with form, the ultimate purpose of which is to give structure to his abstract notion of himself. His efforts are directed toward a present tense, concrete goal of self-objectification through language. His self-exploration is externalized, but it is nonetheless both a reflective act and a reflex reaction. The emphasis in the text on visual words—observation, vision, watching, visible—and the insistence on the concept of the “window,” added to the play on the concept of reflexivity, first, of Carlos’ actions, and then on the reciprocal act of observation between Carlos and Aurea, converge to create a situation in which an object must be seen to be real. He must be seen by another to feel that he exists. Self-reflection is not enough for him; in fact, he is incapable of it at this point in his life. He does not find himself in the “extension of his own space” that is Aurea’s apartment because she is not really there to see him (II 362). Nor does he find his image in the projection of his text. In his writing he achieves only the construction of a form, an externalized structure as yet without the spirit or “soul” of which he speaks at the beginning of his narration. His inexperience, coupled with the idealistic belief that his writing will objectify him and allow him to see through it what is otherwise invisible to him, doom his efforts to create an identity for himself through words. Ricardo’s text, on the other hand, reflects his need to plumb the depths of the mystery that he has become to himself. He has spent his life creating form in his career as an architect; now he craves a more immediate contact with substance and meaning. The ostensible focus of his search is a mystery that centers around a photograph. The picture of Margarita’s room at Vilasacra with the window that faces the mountainside elicits a flood of intellectual, spiritual, and emotional reactions in Ricardo; it is a true example of the “punctum” effect of which Barthes speaks. In this narrative, the emphasis is on symbolism and the myriad responses that any given symbol is capable of generating in the reader. The reader feels comfortable within Ricardo’s narrative, perhaps because this is the third or fourth time s/he has revisited this psychological territory. From Goytisolo himself to Raúl, to the Ricardo and Carlos of Los verdes, to the Raúl of La cólera, and now the Ricardo of Teoría, the details of this character’s life are very familiar, even if altered in some ways. To a certain extent, then, the reader is “freed” from them; they can be backgrounded in favor of a recognition of the interrelationships of process and symbolic interplay that represent another “strata” or layer of the text. Even these are often repetitions of earlier narrative experimentations or expositions whose variations in Teoría open up other possibilities for the explora-tion of the author, character, and reader (ex. the reflections on Las meninas and the presentation of Ricardo’s Ideal City). Goytisolo’s definition of knowledge as an approximation is exemplified in this search that focuses on a situation so mysterious that neither the protagonist/narrator nor the reader is made privy to exactly what it is about. The photograph itself is an exact representa-tion, but, to whom is it directed? Where is the observer to focus his eye? On the room? On the window? On the view from that window? What was the sender of the photograph trying to tell Ricardo? What is the author trying to tell the reader through the object, the photograph, that is in some ways his text? Can s/he control the effects or inter-pretations of the image? Ricardo begins his narrative by speculating on the impact of the written word: Desvanes. Escribir como pensar perfeccionando, como forma de dar agudeza a la idea, de articularla con otras y organizar el conjunto. La palabra escrita no será ni más ni menos cierta que la palabra pensada por el mero hecho de haberse objetivado; lo que sí ganará, en cuanto expresión, es coherencia respecto a sí misma, respecto a lo que con ella se quiere significar y hasta respeto a lo que se significa sin haber tenido la intención de hacerlo, respecto, incluso, a lo que se quería silenciar, a lo que se quería esconder y se revela. (II 404) From the first moment, then, Ricardo considers the phenome-nological nature of words. He conceptualizes them as multi-faceted containers of meaning that require an engagement with context and interpretation to reveal their many aspects. The title of the section, “attics,” in this case, represents the rational level of consciousness in the same way that a basement or catacomb might represent the subconscious. Carlos employs a diary format which is supposedly being written only for himself, thus eliminating the possibility of an outside reader, a posture that would allow its narrator the privacy to be totally open and to reveal his innermost self. Since the reader “knows” that Carlos is not the true author and that the text is not a true diary, it is understood that this is a posture or technique, a fact that underscores the theme of observation in the narrative, in effect converting the reader into a type of voyeur on several levels. Ricardo, however, immediately addresses the idea of the reader and his/her interpretation of the text. He states that everything that is written has a potential reader and that the author knows the risk this entails; therefore, he may wish to choose his words even more carefully in order to “encauzar en benficio propio ese insoslayable margen interpretativo”(II 404). This kind of interplay is a challenge that he enjoys and it stimulates his need to write rather than just to think through his ideas and feelings. He is actively searching for the response of the “other,” not to create an identity for himself, nor simply see himself reflected in someone else’s eyes, as in Carlos’ case, but in order to question and explore along with that other, to create a dynamic flow of energy between them. It should be noted that Ricardo first makes notes, then records his thoughts on a dictaphone and later transcribes them. In this way, he compounds the reflective process. His method displaces the original thought; therefore, we return to a theme mentioned earlier in this study, the displacement or deferral of the referent. From thought to verbal expression to hearing to thought again and, ultimately, to written word, Ricardo’s narrative significantly distances the reader from the narrator/character. In her article, “Teoría del conocimiento: Raúl’s Antagonía,” Lisa Bonee Arbués notes that: Teoría attains a high level of abstraction in part because readers of this novel are “privileged readers.”(…) Also, even without knowledge of the previous works (in Antagonía), Raúl’s portrayal of the three narrators reveals their inherent artificiality and symbolic nature. The self-referential and explicitly literary nature of the three narrators in Teoría add to the abstraction of this work. (…) Carlos, Ricardo, and el Viejo together represent authorial invention. Each adds a different perspective concerning the creative acts of writing and reading but all three express the same basic truths behind literary creation: the supreme importance of configuration and the problem of referentiality or, more exactly, the relationship between reality and artistic creation which establishes itself as a problem of reflection of the self in the other. In Teoría the mirror of literary creation reflects not the world as such, but the individual in the act of observing the world. (496–497) This observation underscores the emphasis placed in the present study on the experience of the world via the individual consciousness. Goytisolo takes it one step further, however, by recognizing that the act of observing the world is not a passive one; it leads to very specific interactions with it that ultimately change it in very real ways. Prefigurations, the product of creative thought that produce models of reality not currently contained within it, oftentimes become the “figurations” of a future reality. As Ricardo contemplates the meaning of time, life, death, and existence, he utilizes symbols that have a particular meaning within his life, but which, he knows, could have many interpretations given the perspective and context of a possible reader. As he writes, he works from the field of play inherent in symbols: El lenguaje no es, en efecto, un código autónomo de símbolos neutros que permita realizar operaciones similares a las que cabe realizar con las cifras, irreprochables por su misma naturaleza; el lenguaje constituye una malla significativa además de formal, un entramado de símbolos que, más o menos rico, mejor o peor articulada, se encuentra por entero, como un todo, en cada uno de nosotros, y el escritor es escritor en la medida en que lo que ha escrito reaviva en cada lector la estructura de esa malla, en la medida en que la estira, dándole tensión, intensidad, polivalencia significativa. (II 515) The writer’s function as described here is to activate something deep within the reader, causing him/her to reach down and back within him/herself to find layers covered over by time and events. One could imagine this in terms of Jung’s collective memory, the strata of which, he speculates, form a kind of psychological DNA within us. This reawakening is necessary to fulfill the potential of meaning for the writer or the reader of any given text, be it written, painted, photographed, or in motion like the reality created by our interaction with the world. We have already seen how the Ideal City is used to help awaken the strata of symbols deep within the narrator and the reader. The other symbol in Ricardo’s narrative that has an equally important effect on him is Margarita. Objectified in death, she becomes the stimulus for Ricardo’s search for a new definition of himself at the mid-point of his life. He winds his way through a maze of memories, dreams, images, myths, and symbolic times and places, always referring back to her influence on him. In this respect, like Raúl’s mother in Recuento, she represents the anima that serves as a mediator between the ego and the self by revealing the contents of the unconscious, both collective and personal, to the conscious, thus making Ricardo more aware of the various aspects of his being and promoting the individuation process. During her life, Margarita represented vitality and freedom to Ricardo. She was a force which could not be contained. She was “celeridad, celeridad de la que se sentía orgullosa como si de un coche deportivo se tratase, impaciencia y prisa (…) y una general precipitación en la conducta (…) fruto más de un reflejo que de una reflexión” (II 433). Ricardo admires this mainly because he is unable to find these qualities in himself. Also, Margarita represented an impossible ideal in a woman, a “Diana Cazadora, mi verdadera diana, la muchacha imposible que nos esquiva con destreza” (II 482). In his text, Carlos saw himself as the hunter, attempting to snare Aurea as the ultimate prize. Ricardo goes beyond that idea by seeking to hunt the consummate hunter, knowing that he cannot capture her, but willing to keep up the chase to attain the impossible. It is therefore a great shock to Ricardo when Margarita is killed. When he sees her body, he begins what he calls a “segunda realidad” which he recognizes as such only when he sees its reflection in the words he is writing (II 523). The changes in his life become visible to him at that point; the memories and associations triggered by Margarita’s death form the basis, in retrospect, of course, of a new perspective on his life. True to her mythic corollary, Margarita is a symbol of both life and death for Ricardo. She becomes the seductress, first by tempting him to search within himself for questions and answers that had not occurred to him before, and then by making connections with him from beyond the frontiers of death, luring him to join her. Madga, her sister, swears to Ricardo that Margarita tried to contact her through a Ouija board with the message,“Que busque Ricardo” (II 416). The photograph of her room is thus interpreted as a link between the dead and the living, “como si la voluntad de Margarita persiste sobre el fuego ya apagado (II 417). Her message causes him to go to Vilasacra, the symbolically named family estate, in which her room was located, in order to investigate an unknown area of his life. Vilasacra lies to the west of the other places to which Ricardo assigns a particular symbolic meaning. This western area is an unknown one to him, a land of small agricultural towns at the foot of the Pyrenees. In this obscure region, associated for unknown reasons in his mind with music, the unknown, and fear, Ricardo will explore his last road, the one where he sees “a la luz de los faros, embebida de niebla, agigantada, la efigie sonriente de Margarita, justo en el punto donde la potencia de la luz se pierde en la niebla” (II 436). This quote concludes a passage in which Ricardo recounts an experience when he was driving toward Port de la Selva and a gust of wind blew his outside mirror askew, revealing a panorama of fluffy clouds above the Cabo Creus (of Los verdes fame) that rivaled the Pyrenees. They included a particularly tall pinkish cloud against which was cast a rainbow disseminating colors affected by the rocks and gray clouds across which it cut its path. In addition, the car begins to make a musical type hum, intensifying the experience. He calls this the “siren effect” and always connects it in his mind with Margarita (II 434–435). It should be remembered that the mythical sirens lured sailors to their destruction. He describes his psychological state at the time of this confluence of events that can only be ascribed to serendipity as one of “metaconsciouness,” the kind of state in which one might be attuned to intuitions about future events. We see that he is, in effect, foretelling the place and circumstances of his own death: Esa sospecha, no por inconfesada menos atormentadora, de que los tumores se contagian, al igual que las alergias o las hernias discales o las fracturas; esa intuición acerca del carácter epidémico de la muerte por accidente, cuando el coche derrapa y uno se sale de la carretera, todavía con tiempo suficiente para preguntarse si soy realmente yo el que vuela y gira y rebota ingrávido contra estos rosados algodones. (II 406) His death finds him at that place, and in that way. It is a death which is divined by the old man and told as part of his narrative. As Margarita seduced him in life, so will she also seduce him and lead him to his death. She becomes Death, frightening, and yet powerful and alluring, tempting Ricardo to a peaceful resignation of life and beckoning him to another stage of consciousness within the ultimate human mystery. The abstraction and obvious “literariness” of Ricardo’s text, as Bonee Arbués pointed out, serves as a mirror to the reader of the ways we configure all aspects of reality through imagery, symbols, and language. His search leads him beyond the reflections of mirrors and through the window of Margarita’s room to explore that mountainside that beckons to him. As we move into el Viejo’s narrative, the theme of specularity intensifies and becomes even more explicit in terms of the analogies and imagery he uses to communicate his legacy. Near the end of Recuento, when Raúl is still in jail, one of many such passages refers to the creative-destructive cycle reflected in the relationship between God and the Devil. This cycle is referred to constantly in the text through the exposition of many relationships whose dynamic is centered in dominance and dependence and the cycles of control and rebellion, stasis and movement, that dynamic creates. Raúl and Nuria, Raúl’s father and grandfather, their fictional doubles in Los verdes, Carlos and Aurea, Matilde and Camila, and, finally, el Viejo and el Moro in Teoría all share the mythic duality seen in other cultural and historical references, such as Saturn and Jupiter, the saints and their oppressors, Franco and the communists, the relationship between Cataluña and Castille, etc. In Recuento, as we have seen, the situations that emerge as expressions of this dynamic are red herrings—false manifestations that the person experiencing them takes to be the whole of the problem without grasping the underlying inevitable cycle of creation and destruction. So a young Raúl embraces communism thinking that it will provide an “eternal truth” that stands against the “lie” of Francoism. Eventually, he sees it as an empty rhetoric masking an equally empty ideology, and is therefore totally disillusioned. But then he begins to comprehend that the cycle underlying it is as fundamental and as eternal as the universe. Even as one god dies and another takes its place, a new rival will rise up to challenge it: Y así como la relación cielo-infierno es de inversión coincidente, como la imagen de una mano contra el espejo, continuación de la otra, pero a la inversa, así la relación entre Dios y el Demonio sólo cabe entenderla como de índole esencialmente dialéctica, en cuanto, representando uno el orden armónico y el otro la transgresión, cuando tras varias revueltas fracasadas la sublevación triunfa, y con ella el caos que, al irse posando, al irse asentando, siempre da lugar a un orden nuevo y definitivo, los papeles se truecan, el Demonio, el rebelde victorioso, ocupa el puesto de Dios, y, al tiempo que instaura un nuevo orden armónico definitivo, engendra su contrario, un nuevo principio de disolución, un nuevo Demonio(…). (I 569) The one defining factor of the universe is constant change. The astrophysicist Hubert Reeves has said that today’s theories of cosmology have confirmed three things: “1) el mundo no ha existido siempre; 2) está cambiando; 3) este cambio se aprecia en el paso de lo menos eficaz a lo más eficaz, es decir de lo simple a lo complejo” (LHMB 27). Within the context of human psychology, with its fear of change and the unknown, this cycle manifests itself in complex ideological, cultural, and emotional structures that act out this fear in wars, devastating relationships, and even paranoia. Yet, even as we often exalt the status quo, we fight against it as well, often in unconscious ways, perhaps because we instinctively understand that change is the only constant, like it or not. So, when the “good” of one group becomes stasis, it will be perceived as tyranny and horror by another, and so transgression and movement become liberating. Inevitably, the agents of that transgression, perceived to be following the Tempter by those currently in power, become the archangels of the future (I 570). Yet both are part of the same entity, the same being, the same force. Thus, humankind has a variety of names for its god of the moment because each one reflects a force that cannot be named: “Aquel que es uno mismo y su contrario” (I 570). As he makes these observations, the narrator of Recuento makes a distinction that is of interest to this study. Raúl’s personal journey has been compared in the text to that of Ulysses and of Dante, as much for the fact that Goytisolo includes references to the fictional works including these characters as for the similarities of the journeys they make. In the transformative ninth chapter of Recuento, however, the narrator states that of those who really descended to the depths of “lo más profundo,” Ulysses, Aeneas, and Dante were really only curious travelers, while Prometheus (really, it was Orpheus) descended into hell to look for Eurydice, “quien se había propuesto dar la libertad al hombre comiendo del fruto prohibido,” which, of course, was, even in this transposed myth, knowledge. The inference, then, is that Raúl undertakes his journey not just as a curious traveler, but as an empassioned, driven individual, willing to sacrifice his very soul for what he might learn. Fittingly, the most efficient and complex expression of the process explained above is the relationship of el Viejo and el Moro. One is, as Raúl put it in Recuento, “la imagen de una mano contra el espejo, continuación una de otra, pero a la inversa,” (I 569) and the old man’s recognition of this fact is the climatic point that allows the resolution of this cycle so others can spring from it. In order to have the cycle of Antagonía come to an end that will also be a new beginning, el Viejo must come to terms with himself, seeing both his good and bad qualities. Like another character in the novel, Matilde Moret, el Viejo has a habit of projecting what he perceives to be his own negative personality traits onto others, specifically, onto el Moro. Starting at this point we can trace the process through which he overcomes his dualistic view of reality and thus achieves a more comprehensive level of understanding and knowledge. First we will look at the elements of el Viejo’s view of himself as the reigning god and representative of all that is “good” in the vil-lage. El Viejo’s attitude throughout his narration is one of superiority and condescension. In fact, we need go no further than his opening statement for an example: “La humanidad se idiotiza progresiva-mente en virtud de la creciente ignorancia que atrofia las facultades intelectivas del hombre” (II 529); closely followed by: “La historia de la filosofía es, así pues, la historia de la imbecilidad humana (…)” (II 530). El Viejo places a much greater value on an activity that he pursues, that of being a thinker rather than a philosopher. The difference, from his point of view, is that philosophers feel the need to categorize knowledge and to separate it from its connection with nature and the obscure origens of the world. Thinkers, however, have another perspective: “Los únicos pensadores que merecen tal nombre son los presocráticos y, en especial, Pitágoras; ellos aún olfateaban los rastros de una sabiduría desaparecida, los restos del naufragio” (II 529). This type of wisdom, the old man believes, takes into account the full range of possibilities, not only of “bondad y belleza,” but also “el conocimiento de todo el horror concebible” (II 529). His narrative consistently stresses what he considers to be his good qualities: the fact that he is an extremely clean person (cleanliness is next to godliness), and that he has an uncanny ability to relate to the plants and animals on his estate. He talks to his crops and thus increases the harvest. He has taught himself and so has not been subject to the type of education which has so tainted others (II 532). He loathes the idea of progress: “(…)el concepto del progreso, con la idea de que el pensamiento se perfecciona con el paso del tiempo(…); como si, jalonadas por determinadas cumbres señoreantes del saber, las ideas del hombre, inicialmente obtusas, toscas o rudimentarias, hubieran ido evolucionando hacia formas de expresión superiores” (II 531). He defines progress in more thought-provoking terms: “Algo así como correr y correr porque a cada paso que damos hundimos el suelo, porque no seguir corriendo equivaldría a caer en los abismos que dejamos abiertos a nuestra espalda” (II 531–32). El Viejo prefers to rely on his instinct, a system, he tells us with very little humility, that is clearly advantageous because it stresses rigor and discipline in dealing with life’s real problems, whereas the intellectual life fosters “toda clase de influencias funestas.” full of “prejuicios, envidias y mezquindades” (II 532). According to him, truth is truth no matter where one finds it; so traveling, languages, and even books are superfluous to obtaining true knowledge. In the midst of this somewhat grandiose soliloquy, Luis Goytisolo subtly enters the narration, as he did in La cólera de Aquiles in order to undermine Matilde’s exaggerated opinion of herself, with a little ironic humor. After stating that he has rarely traveled, knows no languages, and disdains the knowledge which books may offer, el Viejo states: “Quiero significar con lo dicho que cuando me refiero a la creciente ignorancia que aqueja a la humanidad, lo hago con conocimiento de causa, desde una sólida posición de dominio” (II 532). In this way, the author insinuates that his arquetypal “wise old man” must be taken with a grain of salt and that his view of himself may not be as comprehensive and objective as it might be. As the reader has often been told in the course of this novel, even the gods are not omnipotent. El Viejo comments throughout his narration on his good deeds: he has guided the town through difficult times without ever feeling the need to have the titles which would imply power. Of course, he’s not above manipulating public authorities, or using his power to get what he wants (II 558–559). In his own mind, he rationalizes that power, love, and truth are the same thing, and he does not feel any compunction in asserting that “lo que a mí me interesa es el poder” (II 611). He also feels that, if he has had certain successes in his dealings with the town, it is because: “La verdad favorece al poderoso, quien, con justicia o sin ella, tiene todos los argumentos de su parte” (II 552). El Viejo points out that he has frequently helped the poor, the ill, and the disadvantaged. For example, he saved his arch-enemy, el Moro, from a concentration camp, and has even helped support his son who, though brilliant, succumbed to insanity and must be kept in an institution. He stresses the loyalty of those near him, but then gives us reason to believe that the loyalty comes from a form of on-going psychological blackmail which he chooses to view as charity. Certainly, el Viejo envisions himself as the “wise old man.” He is self-taught, guided by his instinct, untainted by the modern world and its distortions. According to him, he is in touch with nature, seeing beyond the limited vision which too much rationalization and technol-ogy have created. He is powerful in the village because he loves it and wants to guide it in the right direction. He is charitable, kind, insightful, loyal, and possesses almost magical, divine powers which he uses for healing and extracting the most the earth has to offer man. As we have already seen, however, there are cracks in this projected image. Beyond the contradictions which inevitably surface in el Viejo’s narration (throughout Antagonía Goytisolo has insisted on the ways in which an author’s text betrays him), there exists one outstanding example of the old man’s subconscious awareness of his negative side: el Moro. In his descriptions of this character, we see the old man’s god countered by his depiction of el Moro as the devil. All of his weaknesses are projected onto his alter-ego who exists to embitter his life and make him question his persona, his created self-image. By reading between the lines, the reader can see that el Moro has played the role of the town revolutionary to el Viejo’s conservative, aristocratic “carlista” stance. El Viejo paints his enemy as a godless degenerate whose decadent living habits yielded a retarded son. He views this event as reflecting a type of cosmic or divine judgment of the relationship. He criticizes el Moro’s propensity to stir up the masses, supporting their right to education or protesting against the power of the church. As for himself, el Viejo, referred to as a “cacique” in other parts of book, defends the system of power he represents: El tópico del cacique, las historias acerca de la forma de hacer negocios que es propia de los ricos de pueblo: otra invención de la gente de ciudad. En el campo, como en todas partes, a la hora de hacer negocios, cuenta más la capacidad intelectual que la corrupción y las presiones de cualquier género. Y también como en todo, incluida la guerra, la única estrategia consiste en ser más fuerte que la otra parte, en tener más dinero, en este caso. (II 548) The contradiction of these statements is self-evident. He defends himself against the accusations of el Moro and others saying that if all the things he were accused of were true: “(n)o habría eternidad en los infiernos que diera cabida suficiente a mi expiación” (II 557). He says the accusations are lies: “(…)es la estupidez humana que permite transformar en demonio a quien siempre ha sido tenido por un santo(…)” (II 557). Since inversion is one of Goytisolo’s favorite means of equating seemingly opposite situations, it is clear that the transformation of devils to gods and vice versa has very little to do with reality and everything to do with a definition of terms based on a human perception of values, with all its fallacies. El Moro is first criticized by el Viejo as having faith in the future. El Viejo categorizes this faith as being absurd because it must be obvious to everyone that the world is crumbling around us, as indeed his world is. He is dying, though he refuses to believe it, and his family name is dying with him. His land, which he has spent his life acquiring, will be divided by numerous descendants whose names he cannot and does not wish to remember. He sees el Moro’s faith as that of the man who has no further to fall and therefore must trust in the future: “¿Y cuál puede ser la fe en el futuro de un pobre diablo como él que hasta el mal hace mal, una fe tan sólo justificable a partir de la imposibilidad de empeorar su desdichada condición presente?” (II 537). What he does not perceive, at this point in the narration, is that this is also a description of himself. He calls el Moro the “ave fénix del mal” (II 555), thus inadvertently (probably) according him the immortality he himself desires. He sees him as evil incarnate, the devil himself. He criticizes his degenerate lifestyle while brushing aside the existence of his own illegitimate child with la Pascualina. El Viejo gives free rein to his imagination and envisions el Moro in Dionysian orgy scenes in which his perversion and lust for power are made manifest in explicit sexual terms. He represents the “bajos instintos” that cannot hope to lead anyone anywhere (II 565). El Moro, then, represents much more than the nemesis of a man who has considered himself to be powerful and now must confront the loss of that cherished power. He is seen as the very image of decay on the one hand and, on the other, his existence puts into doubt el Viejo’s value system. The easy thing is to negate opposing values; hence el Moro is everything the old man isn’t: filthy, plebeian, degenerate, and foolishly idealistic. In spite of the fact that el Viejo creates a manichean duality between himself and el Moro, his instinct or intuition ultimately forces him to see the futility of this opposition and to incorporate his own negative traits, his shadow, into his image of himself. El Viejo’s narration shows clearly that the two men are both greedy, manipulative, and power hungry. They are only different in their choice of justifications of their actions. The impetus for his passage to the next stage of awareness, like Raúl, Carlos, and Ricardo