Review by: Carole A. Holdsworth Source: Hispania, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Mar., 1971), p. 209 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/338140 Accessed: 03-04-2016 21:20 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms
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BOOKS OF THE HISPANIC WORLD 209
his poetry shows a marked religious bent. In
these poems he seems to prefer the sonnet form.
In his poems of foreign ports and exotic cities
he frequently exhibits a whimsical humor. In his amusing "Semana holandesa" Pellicer writes "En Amsterdam/ las griias hablan aermin./ La sinfonia del puerto/ lega con un andante de 100000 toneladas./ Los trasatlAnticos salen en
re;/ los remolcadores en mi./" Occasionally his
humor has an anti-Yankee touch: in "Divagaciones del puerto" we find "En Veracruz hay muchos tiburones/ que comen yanquis con frecuencia."; and in "Oda al sol de Paris" Pellicer
has a radio news flash "Bluefields, Nicaragua,
88/ marinos yanquis han muerto de insolacion. . . .
(During the 1930's the poet was imprisoned
for political reasons. His principal crime probably
was his undisguised admiration of, and ad-
herence to, Jos6 Vasconcelos. This is mentioned
here only because it is likely that some of
Vasconcelos' very bitter feeling toward the United States seeped out through the poet's pen.) Pellicer is definitely worth reading, and his poems teem with unusual metaphors. But let
his verses speak for him: from his "Pausa naval"
we cite "Y la gran agua nave/ empujando archi-
pidlagos mecia/ las hamacas desnudas de los
tr6picos,/ la voz collar del ecuador en nubes/-
para los pies de Dios-de los volcanes/ que
hornean el pan de estrellas de los Andes"; and
from "Ret6rica del paisaje" where Pellicer depicts Mexico City "En el tiempo compacto/ de los dosmiltrescientos metros de la altura,/ los paisajes estin en un solo acto./ El aire es siempre exacto/ en su tiempo tonal; sabe escultura/ porque un pintor en tan vastos andamios/ puede
The young writer Rail Navarrete, author of the novel Aqui alil, en esos lugares and of an Autobiografia, has produced in Luz que se duerme a strange and haunting novel, which
greenish light cast by the lantern clutched in
its hand. A peculiar horror is masterly conveyed
by the novelist's account of the combination of
normal, every-day activities with the secret
preparations for the mysterious, pagan ceremony
of exorcism. "Chapters" Four and Five (indi-
cated only, not so numbered) describe at length
the ancient ritual-performed at night in an
open field-which culminates in the descent to
earth and burial of the restless victim. The pro-
gressively intensified atmosphere of creeping
horror may cause the reader to recall the materialization of Ziemssen in Der Zauberberg. As has been stated, the characters of Luz que se duerme are nameless. The author has care-
fully included, however, representatives of three
generational levels. A small group of children
serve somewhat the purpose of the classical chorus, as they spy on their elders' strange activities. The second level is represented by "el hombre" (the murderer) and "la muchacha," a tragic couple whose attraction is purely animalistic. On the third level, "la mujer ancha" and "el viejo" share the same haunted life as the others, all "pensando que quizA sucediera algo de lo que mas temian" (p. 176). This implicit theme of an endless repetition of fear and violence is also suggested by the children's destruction of the "serpiente verde," both the witch's apparent "famlihar" and a symbol of
never-ending, senseless violence.
Navarrete employs third-person narration, complicated by a constant, vague shifting of subject,
with personal pronouns omitted even when
needed for clarity. A basic (occasionally some-
what self-conscious) stylistic technique is the use
of repetition, the outstanding example being the
question "4Que has visto?" The answer to this
question is both dreaded and eagerly sought, as each character struggles against the terrifying possibility that "la realidad seri que no se librari
de nada, que no caminara ..." (p. 181). Terror
is to be preferred to dissolution.
CAROLE A. HOLDSWORTH
Loyola Univ. (Chicago)
ONETTI, JUAN CARLOS. funtacaddveres. Monte-
combines experimental technique with an ageless
video: Editorial Alfa, 3a. edici6n, 1968. R6stica, 258 pp.
La lectura de esta novela provoca una dual reacci6n en el inimo del lector. Por un lado,
The tropical world of Luz que se duerme is a
numbing and hopeless world, the inhabitants of
del ran poder del autor para internarlo en el
mundo interior de sus personajes, en los mis
theme.
which are completely lacking in intellectual
profundity. The nameless protagonist is an animalized "Raskolnikov," driven to possible suicide
more through fear of the Unknown than through remorse of self-knowledge. The redemptive power
of suffering and of love as developed by Dos-
toyevsky fades here before the irrational fear
which grips all of the anonymous characters. The actual novelistic action centers upon the efforts of a group of neighbors, among whom is the murderer, to exorcise the wandering spirit
of the murdered bruja, whose ghost has been
haunting the neighborhood enveloped in a
siente los efectos de su gran fuerza introspectiva,
rec6nditos secretos del yo, y reve4ar asi, con una
t&cnica que parece cinematogrifica, el lento
"fluir de la conciencia"-segdin la conocida expresion de William James-, o para ser mis
exactos, diriamos mejor el fluir de los mAs
variados procesos psiquicos, para incluir entre 6stos a la sub-conciencia y los instintos, en particular el sexo. Por el otro, el arte de este novelista le deja como un sedimento de frustraci6n, como si se preguntara a si mismo para qu6
este a-larde de tanto talento si al final de la obra
no hallamos mensaje alguno, si la filosofia del
autor y, por ende, de sus personajes, estA des-
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