EMIR RODRIGUEZ MONEGAL
47
Buddhism (via Octavio Paz), which is achieved in this brilliant novel,
appear under the sign of pop art. The linguistic conception , the rigor of
the code , the precision of the signs, come, naturally , from structuralism
but the mixture and juxtaposition of elements, the syncretism of cultures,
the humor, are pop . The parody of a style which already is parody
(Lichtenstein transcribing
to
another code the language of the comic
strips, which in turn are transcriptions of another code); the carnivalesque
application of some theories which the French critics have carried
to
ridiculous heights of solemnity; the surrealistic and at the same time
popular humor with which Sarduy undertakes his demystification against
centuries of Louvre and Sorbonne and College de France, links his joyous
and desperate enterprise with Cabrera Infante's.
It is true that the latter's iconography and system of references are
more accessible: the pop culture of the movies constitutes a kind of
lingua
fran ca ,
a
koine
of this century, which all of us speak (well or poorly) .
Sarduy's narrative language is less accessible. Therefore his work continues
being secret, although I think
Cobra
is possibly the more accessible. Even
so, Sarduy is writing for future readers and most probably his work will
continue being looked at with mistrust by those who believe literature
should call a spade a spade-as if that noble saying (as if literature itself)
were not, inevitably, metaphoric. Sarduy's essays, on the other hand, so
far collected in
Escrito sobre un cuerpo
(Writing on a Body , 1969), are
among the few in Spanish which have seriously applied structuralism
to
the critical evaluation of Latin American literature . (Another decisive
exception is Octavio Paz .) The day when Sarduy's critics are as prepared as
the author to discuss the principles on which his work is based , it will be
easier
to
recognize what is already evident for some: that he is one of the
masters of the new narrative.
A venture similar
to
Sarduy's, though undertaken without Sarduy's
poetic rigor, is the one attempted by Reynaldo Arenas . In at least two
novels-Celestino ante el alba
(Celestino Before Dawn, 1966);
Hal/ucina–
tions
(1969)- Arenas has evolved from the chaotic Faulknerian stream–
of-consciousness of his first work
to
the more complex and experimental
narrative of the second. Based on the
Memorias
(Memoirs) of Fray Servando
Teresa de Mier, this novel not only retells the true life of the nineteenth–
century revolutionary Mexican priest, his adventures and imprisonments ,
but especially recaptures his imaginary life. Along the line initiated by
Marcel Schwob in his
Vies imaginaires
(1896), also illustrated by Virginia
Woolf in her
Orlando
(1928), and Borges's "biographies" in
A Universal
History of Infamy
(1935), Reynaldo Arenas moves swiftly through the
different dimensions of Fray Servando's life , sometimes quoting his exact
