Paseos in el horizonte: Fronteras semioticas en los relatos de Julio Cortazar.
Hernandez, Ana Maria
Approximately two-thirds of Paseos en el horizonte deals with
literary theory. In his prologue Jose Sanjines dazzles and challenges us
with his command of semiotic theory and its various gurus, as well as
with the incisiveness of some of his questions about literature in
general and Julio Cortazar's art in particular.
Sanjines draws his seminal arguments and critical tools from Boris
Uspensky's Poetics of Composition, which focuses on the semiotic
frontier between textual and external reality; Robert Alter's
Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre, which centers on the
novel's deliberate and systematic flaunting of this very duality
between the real-seeming artifice and reality; and Yuri Lotman's
Semiotics of Cinema, which analyzes the public's reaction to
fiction's duplicity in cinema and literature. Sanjines proceeds by
leading us through the various elaborations and modifications of
Alter's theories in the eighties by Linda Hutcheon, who explored
the dimensions and implications of self-reflective literature in
Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Hutcheon, Sanjines
reminds us, points to a misunderstanding of the Aristotelian concept of
mimesis, which implied not only the imitation but also the reordering of
reality; metafiction, she asserts, claims the acknowledgment of the
narrative process as part of mimesis.
The theories of Patricia Waugh in Metafiction: The Theory and
Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction are also analyzed, as are those of
Lucien Dallenbach in Le recit speculaire: Essai sur la mise en abyme,
where the Swiss critic focuses on the creation of a fictional reality
within another fictional reality. At the end of his extensive prologue,
Sanjines informs us that he has limited his analysis to five stories by
Cortazar where the double-framing technique ("relatos de doble
encuadre") is best exemplified. These are "Las babas del
diablo," "Continuidad de los parques,"
"Instrucciones para John Howell," "Apocalipsis de
Solentiname," and "Fin de etapa."
The actual analysis of the texts is, nevertheless, preceded by a
second theoretical chapter, "La operacion fantastica moderna,"
which, like the first, contains only passing references to
Cortazar's opus or poetics. Numerous other critics and
theoreticians are conjured and vanish with various degrees of
effectiveness. Chapter 2 focuses on the definition of the fantastic, and
it centers - predictably - on the theories of Todorov and Christine
Brook-Rose. Special attention is also given to Jaime Alazraki's
study of Cortazar's stories, En busca del unicornio: Los cuentos de
Julio Cortazar, where a concept of the neofantastic is advanced, and to
Rosalba Campra's study La realita e il suo anagramma: Il modello
narrativo nei racconti di Julio Cortazar, which contributes a detailed
analysis of a system of oppositions in the narratives (I/other,
open/closed, past/present, et cetera).
The analysis of the stories themselves, which takes place in the
final three chapters, does not disappoint and is well worth the wait for
those who do not share Sanjines's critical persuasion or who
consider his forays in the critical field somewhat excessive and
disproportionate. Sanjines is a most sensitive critic who places his
insightful observations within the framework so assiduously constructed
in the preceding chapters. His analysis of "Las babas del
diablo" - perhaps Cortazar's most dazzling technical
achievement is one of the finest on the subject, as it centers on the
use of multiple frames and their interrelations. The six-page conclusion
is equally lucid and admirably concise.
Though limited in scope and perspective, Paseos en el horizonte is a
highly sophisticated and incisive analysis of Cortazar's narrative
techniques and, thus, a major contribution to the understanding of his
opus.
Ana Maria Hernandez LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
