Sed de Mar (Artículo en Inglés)

Undermining the Space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's "Sed de mar"
Author(s): Mariana Solares

Source: Letras Femeninas, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Invierno 2005), pp. 139-152
Published by: Asociacion Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispanica
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Undermining
the
Space
of the Hero:
Esther
Seligson's
Sed de mar
Mariana Solares
Southern Illinois
University
Edwardsville
In her
fiction,
Esther
Seligson
(Mexico, 1941)
creates
complex
spaces
for her characters in which
they
move and
speak, rarely
within a
chronological
time frame. Her
work,
including
novels, stories,
poetry,
and
essays,
reflects the adventurous bent of the author.
Seligson
is a
prolific
reader; teacher;
practitioner
of
astrology
and
divination;
speaker
of several
languages;
student of
theater, art, literature,
and
mythology;
resident of
several countries
(including
Mexico,
Spain,
France,
Israel and
India);
and believer in common
spiritual patterns
that cross cultures. The search
("la busqueda")
is a common theme in her life and
fiction,
as well as in
mythical
stories about heroes.1 The novels Otros son los
suenos,
winner of
the Villaurrutia Prize in
1973,
and Sed de mar
(1987)
both follow women
characters as
they
take
voyages
of
exploration
that will
carry
them
beyond
known time and
space.
In Sed de
mar,2
the classical
Penelope
undermines the
myth
of the
hero
by leaving
home to embark on her own
mysterious voyage.
After
suffering agonizing
desire and loneliness while
Ulysses
is
exploring
the
world,
Penelope
abandons her traditional role as
guardian
of home to
seek her own voice. She addresses her husband in her
diary:
Mariana Solares is an assistant
professor
of
Spanish
at Southern Illinois
University
Edwardsville. She received her PhD from the
University
of California, Irvine,
in 1997.
Her research and
presentations
center on
poetry by contemporary
Latin American
poets,
narrative and
poetry
written
by
women,
and the
study
of collaborative works
by poets
and artists. She has an article in
press
on the Mexican
poet
Coral Bracho.
140 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2
Quiero
romper
las olas con
pies
de
gozo y mojarme
los labios en la
sed de
mar, [.
.
.]
danzar con reverente
alegria
en las celebraciones
del vivir
[...]
Olvidar tus sirenas
y
mi
tejido,
el decreto de los Dioses
[..(TR 106)
The tale that
Penelope
tells here excludes such
mythical
elements as an
explanation
for life's
mysteries,
a sense of
unity,
or a means to return
to
origins.3 Seligson exposes
the contradictions inherent in idealized
images,
whether of desired human
figures
or of life
goals sought
on a
journey. Expressing
a mix of
fear,
anger,
and
longing, Penelope
writes
the
following:
Enmudece la voz a fuerza de humillarse
ruego,
el anhelo se
sonroja
... El
tiempo
del amor se transforma con el
tiempo
en
sacrilegio y
exige
su
reparacion, [...] Pero, tardabas, Ulises,
y
la tardanza
empezo
a cobrar su
propia
fuerza,
a
erguirse
altiva,
a socavar con su sonrisa
la
imagen
de una
espera
cimentada solo en recuerdos.
(TR 97)
Because
Penelope
leaves home
shortly
before
Ulysses'
return,
the two are
not reunited.
Ulysses, finding
his wife
absent,
loses his
way
and fails to
complete
his
mythical trajectory.
In this
novel,
Penelope's experiences
are chronicled in
letters,
writ
ten in the
first-person
voices of
Telemachus,
the old nurse
Euricleia,
and
Ulysses,
and in her own
fragmented diary
discovered after her
disap
pearance.
In the
opening
"Proemio,"
it
appears
that both
Ulysses
and
Penelope
are now dead as narrator Telemachus honors their
supposed
tombs:
"Yo, Telemacho,
he
depositado,
con
arreglo
a la
tradicion,
una
guedeja
de mis cabellos en cada una de las tumbas
[.
.
.]
y
he
rogado
porque
sus almas se reencuentren en la
pradera
de los asfodelos
[.
.
.]"
{TR 93).
In the
subsequent
three
chapters, Penelope
and
Ulysses
narrate
their
stories,
ending
in the fifth and final
chapter,
the
"Epilogo"
written
by Penelope
in the form of a letter to
Ulysses.
Here,
Penelope
describes
her final location as "la Isla del
Tiempo
Durable,"
a
place
inaccessible
to
Ulysses
and where she is satisfied to be free from his
space: "Aqui
no
existe huella
alguna
de tu
presencia, y
me veo en la libertad de inventarlo
todome
deje
tanta remembranza
apretada
al
telar,
tanta hebra
trunca,
empezando
con mi
propio
destino"
(TR 114).
Penelope
believes that she
is
just
a
step away
from
silence,
a
place
she
hopes
to enter in the belief
that
only
there can she find a voice.
Although
it is not clear if she achieves
Solares 141
this
goal,
she is transformed as she chooses a different
position
in textual
space. Penelope
alters the
myth
and
effectively destroys
the
hero,
but her
voyages
do not
completely
break with her
mythical
role. As a
mythical
woman,
she has
depended
on the hero to determine her
destiny,
and it is
this
underlying mythical
text that
plays
on her actions and
experiences
in this new version.
The structure of
Sed,
consisting
of several
first-person
accounts,
creates a text that is
ambiguous
and without closure.
Telemachus,
who
provides
the
opening
narration,
suspects
that the nurse
may
have edited
Penelope's diary
in order to
present
a more favorable
image
of
Penelope:
"La carta
que Penelope
le refiere a Ulises
llego
mutilada,
pues
el men
sajero
fue atacado
[.
.
.]
De los
fragmentos
del
diario,
Euriclea nunca
supo explicar
las omisiones
y puntos suspensivos"
(TR 93).
There are
written
fragments describing Penelope's
ordeal
during
the
twenty years
that are silent in Homer's version. In
Seligson's
text,
Penelope
becomes
entangled
in a confusion of words and memories in which
Ulysses
remains
absent,
as she
writes,
"Una
imagen, persigo
una
imagen cuyo
numbre no
encuentro,
persigo
un nombre
cuyas
letras no
conozco, [.
.
.]
si no me
estoy
enredando en las
palabras
a fuerza de no
poder
oirmelas,
a fuerza
de escucharlas s6lo en mis
adentros,
sin encarnarlas
[...]" (TR 94).
Desire
Although Penelope
will remove herself from her
position
of
depen
dence on the
hero,
she becomes divided as she
steps
outside her
mythical
role.
Penelope's expressions
of desire
suggest
that
Julia
Kristeva's views
on love and
psychoanalytic
discourse are
appropriate
in
analyzing
her
dilemma. Kristeva
proposed
that the
subject
sees the
object
of love
metaphorically
as an idealized,
symbolic
Other essential for that
subject
to exist
("Freud
and Love"
247).
When such an ideal
object
is
absent,
it
may
become
metonymic, contiguous
to but
always separate
from the
subject.
In either
case,
the Other is a
symbolic
ideal
existing prior
to
any
relationship
with a lover
(253-54).
Penelope's imagined dialogues
with
Ulysses
reflect a
complex
relation
ship
with an Other,
in both
metonymic
and
metaphoric
terms.
During
his absence,
Ulysses, functioning
as ideal
object
of
love,
is
metonymic
in
being
remembered but out of
Penelope's
reach. Because its
object
remains
an illusion,
her
years-long voyage
of desire is destined to be unfulfilled.
As
Penelope
senses
Ulysses'
imminent return,
she fears the dark side of
desire: disillusion and the confrontation with the unknown:
Y
tengo
miedo, si,
algo
oscuro amenaza con
precipitarse
incontenible.
Me
rompere [.
.
.] y
lo
imaginado pierde
su densidad de
perfeccion
para
transformarse en
algo
neutro,
brutal:
hay que
retroceder,
hay
que
huir o
aprestarse
a
perecer
en un
grito
de avalancha.
(TR 98)
Penelope
decides to flee
by embarking
on a
metaphoric
second
voyage
with the assistance of the
goddess Calypso.
As the
goddess performs
in
Ulysses' place, Penelope
relives some of
Ulysses'
erotic
experiences;
in a
letter to
him,
she
explains,
"Para entenderte
yo
a
ti,
para
no devorar en
el odio lo
que
si alcanzo su
plenitud
vivida,
decidi embarcar
y recoger
tus
pasos,
tomar el rumbo de tus aventuras
y
retrazar los escollos de tu
retraso. .
(TR 117).
She discovers what it would have been like to be
simultaneously
self and Other as she becomes both herself with
Ulysses
and
Ulysses
with
Calypso/Penelope/Other: "Calipso desplego para
mi
todas las
transformaciones,
y por
amor a mi
amor,
revivio
conmigo
sus
enlaces
contigo [.
.
.]" (TR 118).
She describes the
experience
in terms
reminiscent of
Spanish mystics:
"Todo alrededor era luz
y
temblaba. Mis
parpados,
mis
brazos,
mis
senos,
mis
piernas
se
posesionaron
de ti hasta
confundirnos con el roce del aire en la
paja" (TR 118). Abandoning
desire
as
separation, Penelope
enters a
space
of sensual
experience
and
unity
not
possible
in
ordinary
consciousness but accessible in
imagination
and
in the text she
writes;
it is a
metaphoric
connection like that described
by
Kristeva in her discussion of love as the unification of
subject
with
idealized Other. Kristeva shows that such
unity
can be achieved
only
in
terms of the
metaphor
of love
(in discourse)
and with an
ideal,
not an
actual,
lover. In
Sed,
Penelope provides
the
metaphoric
textual
discourse,
and the
goddess
functions as the ideal Other.
Given the
paradoxical
nature of love
relationships,
the close con
nection between love and hate makes the lovers' encounters
inevitably
destructive. Once the Other is
perceived
as different and
separate
from
the
self,
Kristeva finds that it will be hated for its
strangeness
(Kristeva,
Historias de amor
198).
Despite
her
longing
for
Ulysses, Penelope expresses
hate for the man who abandoned her:
Todavia
puedo
levantarme
y gritar
"no
quiero"; [.
.
.] puedo,
a
fuerza de
amor, odiar,
y
no
perdonar
el
que
me
hayas dejado
ir
[...]
Aborrezco la
ligereza
con
que
me abandonas a la ausencia dfa tras
dia como si ella fuese mi verdadero amante.
(TR 105)
Solares 143
Feeling
this slender
separation
between love and
hate,
Penelope
dreams
of sexual encounters with
Ulysses
in which she also inflicts violence on
him:
Entonces
comprendi que
hubiera
querido penetrarte,
si,
herirte
en cada caricia con el mismo cristal con
que
tu heriste mi ser. No
fundirnos. No. Penetrar
y
salir,
penetrar y dejarte
dentro un dardo
inflamado
[...]
Hacer estallar tu ser en tu ser
[...]. (TR 118)
To free
herself,
Penelope figuratively destroys Ulysses: "[. ..]
liberarme
yo
misma de la
prision que
me construi dentro
..(TR 118).
In a
space
filled with
sensation,
where she is
independent
of her need to be seen
by
an
Other,
Penelope gives up
desire and makes it
impossible
for
Ulysses
to
complete
his mission. In a reversal of
roles,
Ulysses
returns to the
space
of forever-unsatisfied desire that
Penelope
has abandoned.4
Although
the
Ulysses
of Sed does not reunite with his
wife,
he claims
to
long
for her
despite
liaisons with other women and
goddesses.
In a letter
to
Euricleia,
Ulysses
recounts his vision of
returning
home and
finding
Penelope.
His claims of
being
misled
by goddesses
and hindered
by jeal
ous
gods
show the traditional
message
of The
Odyssey,
as he describes
overcoming
obstacles in the
exploration
of life:
"[...]
buscando la
expe
riencia nueva
y
el conocimiento de las
cosas,
voluptuosidad
en esa lucha
de la voluntad
por
domenar sus limitaciones
[.. .]" (TR 111). However,
instead of
Penelope's identifying
welcome,
he is distressed to find his
roots
destroyed by
her
disappearance:
Estoy aqui porque Penelope
ha sido la
guardiana
de mis rakes.
;Puede
acaso el sembrador
entregar
su semilla sin
depositarla
en el surco
que
la
fertilice? Yo
soy
el
que
vine a ser nombrado
por
sus labios
[...]
el des
nudo
que penetra
en el recinto
para
ser
purificado
.
..(TR 112-13)
Like
Penelope prior
to her
flight, Ulysses
seeks
completion
in the Other
represented by
his wife. In
Ulysses'
desire to return to his home
space,
we see what Luce
Irigaray
describes as the
positioning
and
taking
of the
woman's
space by
the male in his
need,
lacking any
consideration for the
woman's wish to
occupy
another
space
without limits.
Irigaray
confronts
the male and derides him: "You never meet me
except
as
your
creature
within the horizon of
your
world"
( 47). Having
endured
twenty years
of
confinement,
Penelope steps
outside that enclosure into a
place
not
accessible to
Ulysses,
similar to that of
Irigaray's
narrator:
"Already
I am
further than the furthest
you
could
imagine [...] Elsewhere,
because I
am so close that
you
cannot see
me,
nor hear
me,
nor even touch me. I live
in a
space
and time that are not
yours [...]" (Irigaray
19).
As in
Irigaray's
text,
the male hero will fear to move outside his own circle or to
recognize
Penelope
other than as an extension of himself and a means to maintain
his roots in home and
family ( 20).
Penelope undergoes
transformation
as she moves outside the structured world of
myth
into a
space beyond
Ulysses'
world.
However,
it is not clear if she finds the
life-giving space
of infinite
feeling
described
by Irigaray
( 20).
Silence, Names,
and Games
Even as
Penelope
tries to
place
herself in the
spaces
of silence and
absence in the novel's final
chapter,
such an action cannot be
compre
hended. The reader
imagines Penelope's
final
act,
described
by
her as
an entrance into
silence,
as
part
of an
"impossible
text" in the
style
of
Roland Barthes. Barthes classified desire and textual
descriptions
into
two
categories: pleasure,
which is accessible in
experience
and
writing,
and
bliss,
which cannot be described and becomes
part
of an
"impos
sible text"
(20).5
In the
mysterious space
from which
Penelope
writes at
the novel's
close,
it does not matter whether she is
alive;
she will
remain,
both for
Ulysses
and for the
reader,
in an
ambiguous place
of
absence,
like death in that it is not knowable and like "bliss" because it is
beyond
the bounds of
language
and
description. Accordingly,
in the final words
of the
novel,
Penelope imagines
the irresolvable contradiction of silence
becoming quiet:
"El silencio dimelo
Ulises,
.jhabla
el silencio?
^Que
dice el silencio cuando calla?.
.(TR 118).
She
suggests
that
language
itself will
disappear,
but we as readers know that
language
remains in
the form of the
text,
even if the
mythical Penelope
is absent. We can
only
imagine
the
space
of
absence,
where "bliss" does not
require language.
The
silence
preceding
all
writing
is not achieved as the "new" text
depends
on
the "other" one
slipping through
to
give
it
meaning,
even in
ambiguity.
The
paradox
of
Penelope's
new, desired
position
is that she cannot
speak
while
claiming
silence,
nor can the
play
of
myth
be
forgotten.
For
Ulysses
and
Penelope,
there is a common theme that is also found
in Homer's
Odyssey,
that of the
trick,
"el
engano."
The
play
of
appearances
Solares 145
and of
language
is also
important
in
Sed,
not
surprising
in a
contemporary
approach
to a
myth
in which the
metaphorical
is its crucial function.
The
meaning
of names as
signs
is
explored,
as it is in The
Odyssey;
but
in Sed
Penelope
and
Ulysses
will take
differing approaches
to the
game
of names.
Ulysses'
heroic
identity
is maintained
through
his memories
of
home,
all means
being justified
in the
epic
and in Sed to enable his
return. In
Sed,
Penelope
uses a measure of
self-deception
to
escape
from
becoming
the wife of a now-altered hero.
Memory
and dream become
for her
spaces
where
language
and the simultaneous
hope
and fear of
Ulysses'
return are confused:
Hablar de lo
que
no
tengo,
de lo
que
no se como decir
[...]
de mi
cuerpo
envuelto en el recuerdo de tu ultima caricia
[...] fragmentos
de sueno
que
vienen a
irrumpir
en
plena vigilia
lacerandome la
piel, [. ..]
ese
juego
entre la
espera y
el temor a
que
la
espera
termine
[...]. {TR 94)
Memory
and dream are
perceived
as
spaces
of illusion or
"engano"
as
Penelope repeatedly
awakens from
sleep
or reverie to discover that she
is
alone,
still
waiting.
Yves
Bonnefoy provides
an
interesting analysis
of the
significance
of
the
play
on the
concept "nobody"
in
Odysseus's
(this spelling
is used
by
Bonnefoy)
heroic
voyages.
In Homer's version of the
epic, trickery
enables
the
taking
of
Troy
as well as
Odysseus's
narrow
escape
from the
Cyclops,
during
which he claimed to be called "No Man." In the course of his
journey
he
pretends
to be a
stranger,
and he arrives home
disguised
as a
beggar.
On his
travels,
Odysseus acquires
a false
identity, appropriate
in
a
deceptive
world maintained that
way by
the
gods
themselves.
However,
to return home he will need to rediscover his true
identity
as a
hero,
not as
Nobody,
and to
merge
the
conflicting
inner and outer worlds in
order to take
up
an authentic inner
place. Bonnefoy
shows
how,
upon
his
return,
Homer's
Ulysses
will oscillate back and forth between the
sign
of the
beggar
and that of the
hero,
depending
on whether
memory
or
trickery
is
required
to achieve
recognition
at a
particular
moment. He
reveals himself to the nurse Euricleia
by exposing
the scar he received
from a wild boar
years
before,
thus
playing
on
memory. Bonnefoy
shows
that it is
through
the
body
and
memory
that
Ulysses
will
prove
himself
to his
wife,
first in a show of
strength
in
killing
the suitors and then in
knowing
the secret of the bed he built around a tree: "The
name,
which
had become
Nobody through
a
cunning
trick,
must find its final basis in
a
genealogy by finding
evidence
right
in the hero's
body, [. ..]
the solid
body
of the craftsman who no
longer
needs to use tricks but can now
construct"
(Bonnefoy
497).
Reference to that
special
inner
space
connects
past
and
present
and enables the
Ulysses
of The
Odyssey
to take on his own
name,
centered
through
the
body
in time and
place (497).
In
Seligson's
version,
Ulysses
is unable to return to his
roots,
symbolically preserved
in the
body
of his wife.
Finding Penelope gone,
he
writes,
"La inalterable
presencia
de
Penelope ocupaba
en mi un
espacio [...] ningun
otro
gesto
alterabala
imagen
de surostro trasmis
pupilas [...]" (TR 112).The
hero
has lost
everything
that anchored him.
If
Ulysses'
return is
seen,
in
Bonnefoy's
terms,
as a
retiring
from
exterior
deception
in the world to interior
authenticity
at
home,
Penelope
turns the
signs
around in Sed and moves into an exterior
space
to
escape
dependence
and discover herself. The call that motivates her to flee
is,
like
Ulysses'
connection with
home,
a
physical
one that
opens up
her
emotional horizons: "Y me toco el
llamado,
Ulises
[...]
es como un ansia
de
apertura,
de abrir el horizonte hasta el limite de su latir
profundo [...]"
(TR 116).
Her
journey
is more difficult because it is
open-ended
in
space
and
time,
having
no destination other than to move
away
and to retrace
Ulysses' steps.
She does not find a
name,
an
identity,
or the words to
describe her
experience.
In
Sed,
there is no word that could return to the
speaker
the
power
and
unity
of
original
creation.
Rather,
words and names are
deceptive
and in need of
interpretation.
Both
Ulysses
and
Penelope
will end
up
nameless at the novel's
closeUlysses
for lack of an Other to name him
and
Penelope by
her own choice as she
steps
outside the
myth. Ulysses
remains
"Nobody,"
stuck in a textual
space
constructed of
pieces
of his
own
myth,
and
Penelope accepts any
name because she has not been
"Someone" from the start:
"Penelope
ha
quedado
atras. Para la
que hoy
te habla da
igual
el nombre con
que
la nombren:
Cora, Circe,
Nadie.
^No
fue asf como te nombraste?Nadie
[...]" (TR 114).Because
the
myth
cannot
speak
without its
symbols, Penelope
creates an
ambiguous
text
that undermines the earlier one.
Although Penelope
as fictional character
and voice
suggests
that the
myth
of the hero
may
be
altered,
it becomes
evident that for the
reader,
this is
impossible.
The
underlying presence
of the traditional
myth
remains,
preventing Penelope
from
occupying
the
space
she desires.6
In her own
writings,
such as
Didlogos
con el
cuerpo (1981),
Seligson
provides
clues to
Penelope's voyage
and the limitations in
achieving
Solares 147
transformation in
language.
In
Dialogos,
she
argues
that the word/lan
guage
comes from the
body
in contact with another: "Recorrer un
cuerpo
como
quien
remonta la corriente de un rio hasta su
origen, [...]
el barro
al
que
la
palabra
dara
forma, [.
.
.]
la indeleble marca de la
vida,
fluir
incontenible de la voz emitiendo
signos que
son la
piel
misma, [.
.
.]"
(TR 67).
The
body
of the
Other,
as
object
of
search,
offers the
potential
for
language
and adventure:
Mirar, tocar, escuchar,
nombrar: recorrer un
cuerpo
es realizar un
acto de
palabras
[.
.
.] Porque
se sale hacia un
cuerpo
como
quien
parte
de
viaje por
desconocida
ruta,
hinchadas las velas
por
azarosos
vientos
[...]. ("Dialogos"
67-68)
From this
perspective,
the lack of another's
body
as the
necessary space
for the creation of words could
explain Penelope's difficulty
in
creating
a
voice. She
gives up
the
body
to free herself from
desire,
but she also needs
the
body
to create a voice.
As
Ulysses
returns from the
world,
Penelope
flees
potential intimacy
and enters another undefined and limitless
space
she has constructed for
herself. The
mythical space
of
origins, including
the
body
as the source
of
language,
cannot connect with the
ambiguous spaces suggested
in Sed
as the
mythical
text is deconstructed.
Penelope
and
Ulysses interchange
multiple positions
without
meeting
in
any
of them. In
Sed,
the sea
repre
sents a boundless
space
for
Penelope,
and thus she launches herself into
it as a
potential
means to
escape
the interior
prison
of desire. In
contrast,
Ulysses
moves about in the sea to
prove
himself but
always longs
to return
to the
interior,
bounded
space
of home.
Penelope
remains within
spaces
of
imagination, initially
that of
desire for the absent
Ulysses
within the
myth
that created her and then
that of a
voyage
to a
mysterious space
from which she writes at the close
of the novel. She moves from
communing
with absence to
stepping
into
silence,
from the
space
without the
body
to the
space
without
language.
Although Penelope's
insatiable desire tears her
apart
in the absence of its
object,
in this novel she has the final word.
By giving up
desire,
she makes
it
impossible
for
Ulysses
to fulfill his mission. In a reversal of
roles,
Ulysses
will now take his
place
in the
space
of desire forever unsatisfiedthat
position
abandoned
by Penelope.
Although Penelope
and
Ulysses
will no
longer
fulfill their roles as
symbols
within the
myth,
their
positions
remain determined
by
their
relationship
to each
other,
even as the
story changes
in this revised text.
In
studying
the
paradoxes
of
Sed,
Jacques
Derrida's
concept
of the
"key
word" reveals how a text
may
be deconstructed rather than unified.
Gyatri Spivak,
in her introduction to
Of Grammatology,
defines
key
words in this
way:
If in the
process
of
deciphering
a text in the traditional
way
we come
across a word that seems to harbor an irresolvable
contradiction,
and
by
virtue of
being
one word is made sometimes to work in one
way
and sometimes in another and thus is made to
point away
from the
absence of a unified
meaning,
we shall catch at that word,
(lxxv)
The most
contradictory
of terms for
Penelope
is that of "silence." As she
writes her
story,
she
speaks
of
stepping
into
silence,
an
unimaginable
place
for her. The
painful ambiguity (key word)
for
Ulysses
is
"absence,"
for the absence of
Penelope
undermines his
mythical
role and forces him
to take another
position
that will involve neither
presence
nor absence.
In the cases of
Ulysses
and
Penelope,
each moves
away
from
completing
the unified
symbol: Penelope
+
Ulysses
=
the hero's
voyage
and return
home.
Instead,
they
become
potentially separate signs
of No One and
of Silence in a written text that cannot be silent. Rather than
acquiring
different
identities,
the
positions
of the "new" characters
appear
to be
interchangeable
and to
prevent any
outcome in closure.
Penelope
will not
actually
become a
sign
of
silence,
only
its
possibility
as a textual
layer
erased and written over. Reminders of the earlier
mythical
text make Sed
readable and
prevent
it from
being
silent. "Silence" as a
sign
is thus not
what it seems when both
Penelope
and
Ulysses speak
of
existing
in it once
each has lost its Other. Both
figures
will alter their
positions
with
respect
to the
concept
of names and
naming,
traditional elements in
language
and creation. Whereas in the
myth Ulysses
was No Man
needing
to
prove
himself,
here he remains forever in an
ambiguous space, lacking
the
unity provided by mythic identity. Penelope occupies
a similar
position
with
respect
to a
name,
but she
accepts
that she will have none. She
does,
however,
take
up
a new
position by writing
and
speaking, giving up
the
place
of the
passive object
of desire incarnate.
Together
these two
words,
absence and
silence,
combine as another
impossible sign
that erases that
of
Ulysses
and
Penelope.
It is the reader's sense of the
previous mythical
values that lends some
meaning
to their new
positions.
Solares 149
Penelope's apparent
transformation becomes more
ambiguous
because
we,
as
readers,
cannot
entirely separate
the old and the new texts.
Both silence and absence are
impossible spaces
for characters
depending
on
myth
and
textuality.
In
apparent
silence,
Penelope
will write
herself,
becoming
No One as she
replaces
the
myth
of
Ulysses
and
Penelope
with
the
possibility
that neither hero nor home were other than
writings
from
another
space
of
absence,
that of desire and
language.
The
reader,
how
ever,
will not
forget
the
original Odyssey
as a
journey completed, making
a silent voice from nowhere
impossible
at the same time that the
myth
has been undermined.
NOTES
'Discussion of Esther
Seligson's background
and interests comes from an
interview
published by Miguel Angel
Quemain
in Reverso de la
palabra.
This
is an informative collection of interviews with
many
Mexican
writers,
freely
pursuing
their
opinions
on life and literature. Additional information also comes
from
my personal
conversations with the author.
2Sed de mar will be abbreviated as Sed. All of
Seligson's
works referenced in
this article can be found in the collection
Trtptico,
abbreviated as TR.
3For a discussion of the uses of
myth
in
literature,
including
the
voyage
of
the
hero,
refer to works
by
Juan
Villegas,
such as La estructura mitica del heroe.
In
Mythical
Intentions in Literature,
Eric Gould describes
myth
as an intention
"to confront the unanswerable" in terms of
multiple possibilities
in
language
that transform
meaning
into form
(178).
Other
contemporary approaches
to
myth
and literature
appear
in works
by
Colin Falck and Milton
Scarborough.
4The novel introduces the theme of unsatisfied desire in the title as well as
the
epigraphs,
all
referring
to thirst and
introducing
the
metaphorical
nature
of the
language anticipated
in the novel. The first
epigraph
is from the
poem
"Cuarto solo"
by Alejandra
Pizarnik:
"Seguramente
vendra / una
presencia
para
tu sed /
probablemente partira
/ esta ausencia
que
te bebe"
(TR 91).
This
poem
reflects the
ambiguity
of the novel's title as
presence
and absence are
personified,
the
presence being
the unrealizable
quencher
of thirst at the same
time absence drinks its
object dry.
In
Sed,
Penelope occasionally
feels that her
imagined
lover is absence itself,
as she writes to
Ulysses,
"Aborrezco la
ligereza
con
que
me abandonas a la ausencia,
dia tras
dia,
como si ella fuese mi verdadero
amante"
(TR 105).
Pizarnik's
poem
sums
up
the nature of desire as
longing
Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2
for an
object
that exists
only
in
language.
The second
epigraph
is from "Suite
del insomnio"
by
Xavier Villaurrutia:
"Tengo
sed. /
^De que agua?
/
^Agua
de
sueno?
No, / de amanecer" (TR 91).
Thirst
implies
a desire for a
change
that
might
reduce the
suffering
of the
existing
state,
but it
may
not mean
possession
of the
object
of
longing.
The title of the
novel,
Sed de
mar,
suggests
a boundless
desire,
like a
thirst
unquenchable
because slaked on salt water. Ocean and water
imagery
appear
often in the
language
of
Penelope
as she tells
Ulysses
he will
forget
her:
"Olvidaras,
sin
mar,
sin
isla,
sin balsa
[...]
libre de esa sed insaciable
..(TR
117).
To describe her immense
longing,
she
writes, "Quiero
romper
las olas con
pies
de
gozo y mojarme
los labios en la sed de
mar,
olvidar la
lugubre
cosecha de
vigilias
inclementes"
(TR 106). Penelope metaphorically
satisfies her thirst but
not in a reunion with
Ulysses;
rather,
Calypso
acts in his
place
in an encounter
both erotic and violent. The reader understands
that,
for
Penelope,
the unwritten
space may
be the silence and
eternity
of deathdesired but
beyond
conscious
experience.
The novel's title
appears
also to be an intertextual reference to a
poem pub
lished
by
Ramon
Lopez
Velarde in
1909, "Hermana,
hazme llorar." In
directing
himself to the beloved "sister"
Fuensanta,
the
lyric
voice asks the
following:
Fuensanta:
tu
conoces el mar?
Dicen
que
es menos
grande y
menos hondo
que
el
pesar.
Yo no se
por que quiero
llorar:
serd tal vez
por
el
pesar que
escondo,
tal vez
por
mi infinita sed de amar.
Hermana:
dame todas las
lagrimas
del mar ...
(Obras 106)
If
Penelope's
thirst is as boundless as the ocean in the sense of desire unsat
isfied,
in
Lopez
Velarde's
poem
it is love that is limitless in the
suffering
of the
lover.
Lopez
Velarde's lover
accepts
his situation of
separation
from the
beloved,
whereas
Penelope
seeks to
bridge
the
gap
with her absent lover
by entering
another
space
and
constructing
herself.
5In
describing
the
"pleasure
of the
text,"
Barthes finds that
pleasure
can be
expressed
in words and
logic,
whereas bliss involves the
split subject
and cannot
be
directly explained (20-22).
Solares
6In her
analysis
of
Sed,
Aralia
Lopez
Gonzalez discusses
Penelope's
need
to find her own name as
part
of a search for
identity apart
from that of
Ulysses.
Lopez
Gonzalez finds that the act of
negating
her
relationship
with the hero is
sufficient to
provide Penelope
a
subject
voice: "Se trata de un nombre
indepen
diente de la mediaci6n del hombre
y
su
espejismo. Penelope
dice
'no',
se
niega
a ser asumida
[.
.
.]
como una
abstraction;
es
decir,
como una
mujer
ideal"
(471).
This action and the
independent
decision to leave home are sufficient
for
Lopez
Gonzalez to conclude that
Penelope
has succeeded.
However,
I find
that the new character will remain without an
identity
because of her existence
in textual
ambiguity.
If
acquiring
a name is
part
of the formation of the male
hero,
then it is not
surprising
that
Penelope
would
give up having
a name as
she refuses that
path.
WORKS CITED
Barthes,
Roland. The Pleasure
of
the Text. New York: Hill and
Wang,
1975.
Bonnefoy,
Yves.
Mythologies.
Vol. 1.
Chicago:
U of
Chicago
P,
1991.
Derrida,
Jacques. Of Grammatology.
Trans.
Gayatri Spivak.
Baltimore:
Johns
Hopkins
UP,
1976.
Falck,
Colin.
Myth,
Truth and Literature: Towards a True Post-Modernism.
Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge
UP,
1994
Gould,
Eric.
Mythical
Intentions in Literature. Princeton: Princeton
UP,
1981.
Homer. The
Odyssey.
Trans. Albert Cook. New York:
Norton,
1977.
Irigaray,
Luce. Elemental Passions. New York:
Routledge,
1992.
Kristeva, Julia.
"Freud and Love: Treatment and Its Discontents." The Kristeva
Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia
UP,
1986. 238-71.
. Historias de amor. Mexico:
Siglo
Veintiuno,
1987.
Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2
Lopez
Gonzalez,
Aralia. "La otra etica:
reinterpretacion
femenina de
mujeres
miticas." Sin
imageries falsas
sin
falsos espejos.
Coord. A.
Lopez
Gonzalez.
Mexico: El
Colegio
de
Mexico,
1995. 465-75.
Lopez
Velarde,
Ramon. Obras. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Economica,
1971.
Quemain,
Miguel Angel.
Reverso de
lapalabra.
Mexico: La memoria del
Tlacuilo,
1996.
Scarborough,
Milton.
Myth
and
Modernity:
Post-critical
Reflections. Albany:
State U of New
York,
1994.
Seligson,
Esther.
Triptico.
Presentacion de
Jose
Maria
Espinasa.
Mexico:
Consejo
Nacional
para
la Cultura
y
las
Artes,
1993.
.
"Dialogos
con el
cuerpo." Seligson
61-87.
. "Otros son los suenos."
Seligson
19-55.
. "Sed de mar."
Seligson
91-118.
Spivak, Gayatri.
Translators Preface. Derrida ix-lxxxvii.
Villegas,
Juan.
La estructura mitica del heroe. Barcelona:
Planeta,
1973.

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Undermining the Space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's "Sed de mar"

Author(s): Mariana Solares

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