NOSTALGIA FOR THE UNKNOWN IN ESTHER SELIGSON

Author(s): J. Ann Duncan

Source: Ibero-amerikanisches Archiv, Neue Folge, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1984), pp. 23-43
Published by: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert
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 NOSTALGIA FOR THE UNKNOWN
IN ESTHER SELIGSON

J. Ann Duncan*

Esther Seligson is a highly original writer,1 whose work immedi-

ately appeals to the reader through the tenderness and lyricism of her
poetic prose, the beauty and sensorial quality of the images, and the
pervasive atmosphere of enchantment. This dream-like world and
richly evocative, incantatory language are captivating; one submits to
the charm, but does not at once grasp the author's intentions. This is
largely because she disregards genres and other literary conventions,
experiments continually with form, varies the narrative voice without
warning, confusing time sequences, fusing myth with present action,
fantasy with reality. This variety of form, which is at first baffling,
because each work asks us to redefine our expectations and our
reading habits, responds to an underlying search for the adequate
expression for something Seligson feels has not been previously ex-
pressed, perhaps not even experienced. Since she is above all con-
cerned with communicating and creating experience, through words,
and writing both to share her enjoyment of language and its possibili-
ties, and through a compulsive need to translate sensations into
words, aesthetic concerns are central to her work. However, her main
inspiration, which gives her work its depth and poignancy, comes
from a spiritual search and the wish to record and communicate the
stages of this search. The unique quality of her style and the flexibil-
ity of form in all her work respond, then, to this urge to descifrar , to
decode experience, discover its hidden patterns, and recreate them
through language, so that form and meaning will be inseparable.

* J. Ann Duncan: M. A., B. Litt. (Oxford 1966), Lecturer (Exeter University,

1965 - 1970), Director of Studies in Modern Languages (Newnham College,
Cambridge) since 1970. Address: Newnham College, Cambridge, CB3 9DF,
England.
This article was written during a stay in the Rockefeller Study Center in
Bellagio and my thanks are due to the Rockefeller Foundation for its gener-
ous hospitality and the provision of the ideal conditions for a period of
uninterrupted work.
1 Born in Mexico D. F. in 1941 Esther Seligson has travelled widely, particu-
larly in France, Spain and Israel and been involved in many literary activities.
She is a critic, journalist and lecturer as well as creative writer.

Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv N. F. Jg 10 H. 1 1984

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 24 J. Ann Duncan

Because the search is by i

must constantly be recom
This is why her slim volum
or short stories, do not seem
or subject matter, althoug
certain homogeneity of st
unity and meaning become
themes and recurrent image
There is already some clu
the titles of her books: Ot
Luz de dos, De sueos, pre
tiempo. 2 The importance
basis of her work; it is do
exploration of relationshi
another account of the joy
by the way in which this is woven into other equally important
themes and, above all, presented as an experience which has less to
do with the individual than a collective and universal quest. Likewise,
specific and ephemeral details of relationships only serve to drama-
tise a more general and timeless drama. The uniqueness of the indi-
vidual is not denied, but what counts is their rle in the couple and
in the continuum of their cultural tradition. Seligson is an immensely
sensuous writer; the immediacy of the present moment, whether it
concerns the delights of nature or sexuality, is evoked with intensity
in her work, but the physical and ephemeral are ultimately subordi-
nated to the spiritual.
At the root of her work is a deep nostalgia, a wish to recapture a
felicity which has both been lost and never experienced ("el dolor
por lo nunca vivido y por lo que quera vivir", MT 92) - a feeling of
being excluded from a paradise only glimpsed through dreams or
memory, but which would be immediately recognizable if attained,
and the exclusion from which is a source of profound disorientation:
"Esa vaga impresin de haber existido ya una vez es la vida? Lo
peor es esta nostalgia por aquello que hubiese querido vivir"
(LD 32 f.).
Her characters are therefore all engaged on a quest for the hidden
meaning of the world around them, apparent in relationships be-
tween phenomena, in dreams and other manifestations of the uncon-
scious. Above all, they are seeking to overcome their separateness as

2 All published in Mexico and referred to by the following abbreviations: OS

(Los nuevos valores, 1973 ),DC (Artfice ediciones, 1981); X,Z> (Mortiz 1978);
SPOV (Cuadernos de Humanidades no. 10, UNAM, 1978) and MT (Artfice
ediciones 1981). Her first book, Tras la ventana un rbol (cuentos, 1969) is
no longer available.

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 25

individuals and especially as lovers; to reunite the

form, through the couple, a new entity which tra
aware that this may be impossible or only ephemeral.

"esa otra mitad nuestra que en los orgenes perdimos y

entonces, no nos es en nada semejante, es decir, en caso d
reconocimiento, e incluso llegarn a unirse en el todo de s
tendr apenas la brevedad de un conjuro" ( OS 27).

Although at times expressed overtly, this metaph

identity and for meaning and some sort of perman
tends to emerge gradually through the images and un
of Seligson's work. It is at its most explicit in Ot
and the first three sections of Luz de dos and is-
mystical in expression in the other texts, particu
presagios y otras voces, which on first reading wou
constitute a moving exultation at the joy of living, se
alternating with cries of anguish at the impossibil
one with the beauty of the world, at the plight of re
questioning, exiled from perfection. The culmina
initiated in Otros son los sueos occurs in Morada e
Seligson says

"cancela un perodo de bsqueda de una continuidad temp

dentro de los sueos, pero que he sentido que no exi
realidad [...] que te hace entender la parte invisible de la v
realidad y de todo lo que te ocurre como ser humano, no
individual, sino en tanto que ser inscrito en un contexto
por el que corre el tiempo."3

Since the narrative thread is only tenuous and th

incorporated in the text in different ways in each
of use briefly to examine each book separately bef
a synthesis of the themes.
Her first full length work, Otros son los sueos, is
the themes are developed most fully, as well as th
are perhaps the least immediately accessible. This
it is termed a "novela" on the cover (and indeed g
Villaurrutia for the novel in 1973) it thwarts our e
genre and has little in the way of narrative thread, r
acters or any of the concessions to realism which are
the first three sections of Luz de dos.

3 Interview with Enrique Aguilar in El Universal, 31. 8. 81

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26 J. Ann Duncan

Otros son los sueos does, it

with an implication of a be
moral. There is a train journe
a progression (of thought ra
by the journey. However, th
train journeys which coexist
Butor's La Modification, nor
from trains or the specific
unmentioned).
There would seem to be a c
ing a sort of inner monologu
person) is not identified at
confirmed that the first per
same woman. The book begins "Y dijo", and it could be anyone
speaking; moreover the initial conjunction suggests a continuity from
which we are excluded but which is nonetheless important as a sign
of the continuity of consciousness and action which precedes the
protagonist's decision to escape and which is vital to her responses.
Gradually the monologue becomes a dialogue and the unidentified
tu, obviously the husband, is at times a vivid presence, almost always
incorporated in the narrative through love-making and through tac-
tile and olfactory sensations, but at other times a distant, symbolical
figure, the Spouse of the Bible or Cabala.
All Seligson's fiction is characterised by this multiplicity of iden-
tity, represented by the frequent shift of narrative voice and a super-
imposition of figures from legend or history (here that of Heloi'se) or
that of the protagonist.
Otros son los sueos is primarily an individual's search for herself;
it is the exploration by one person of her own experience, focusung
mainly on a few intimate memories and on her dreams and aspira-
tions. She is engaged in an urgent attempt to rediscover her own
identity, in the vacuum represented by a solitary train journey, a
continuous present without past or future, a space where usual
demands cannot impinge, any more than the rle definitions imposed
on her by others. But this search for the self is above all a collective
and historical process; it is a search for the meaning of her existence
within the couple, the family, her cultural tradition.
The book is short, lyrical and poignant. One could read it on one
level as a meditation on the joy and agony of a relationship, or even
focus on the feminist undertones of the woman's need to define
herself, liberated from the rles imposed on her as daugh-
ter/wife/mother; but it is multi-layered in terms of meaning and
chronology, going far beyond the subjective. It is a monologue,
blending with dialogue and even chorus, which recounts the universal
quest for meaning in the individual's experience and heritage.

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 27

The mystical nature of the sexual adventure

ration and discovery) is, perhaps paradoxicall
explicit form in the next book, Trnsito del
the most obviously sensuous. It is very brief
divided into four sections: Vigilia / Desperta
do del cuerpo)-, there are no characters or na
a kind of prose poem on the theme of a lyric
through the body, in which words and vision
the physical reality they depict. The opening
bly the scope of this text and Esther Selgiso
mirada, al estallar, se hace palabra, y la palab
go, dilogo de caricias que retornan a la mira
voces mudamente articuladas" {TC 3, DC 9). All her writing bears
witness to the explosion of vision, which becomes words, to the
dialogue inherent in all monologues, to the dialogue of gesture and
tactile impressions which returns to unvoiced words in the essential
"voice" or expression of all phenomena, which can only be grasped
intuitively.
As with Breton's dictum that "la beaut sera convulsive ou ne sera
pas", perception in Seligson is convulsive, the result of the shock and
delight of recognition, but recognition of the unknown, of a deeper
sort of reality, longed for but not previously experienced, reached
intuitively by a state of receptivity to the intrinsic nature of the
Other and yet experienced as a dynamic process, incorporating the
individual in a cosmic pattern of shapes, light, sensations and words,
a kaleidoscope of sensual impressions testifying to the presence of a
superior order: "La mirada, al estallar, se hace nombre, danza genera-
dora de vocales y consonantes, torbellino que ir modelando con
invisibles manos un cuerpo" ( TC 3 f., DC 9).
Essentially similar in theme though quite different in form is the
longer and more ambitious Luz de dos, which is a collection of four
short stories, in which the narrative interest is clearly subordinated to
the creation of mood and atmosphere. Like all Seligson's writing it is
intensely lyrical and the reader, like the characters, is literally en-
chanted, caught in a magic spell, a dreamlike world where primeval
impulses, fears and desires are acted out and where the dream can
easily turn to nightmare.
All the stories represent an illumination of the couple, a "luz de
dos"; illumination, as in Rimbaud's prose poems of that name, both

4 TC (La Mquina de escribir, 1977). An augmented version of this work

(36 pages of text comprising four new sections, "Renuncia del cuerpo",
"Aspiracin a la presencia", "Conciencia del encuentro" and "Celebracin del
rostro") appeared in Artfice ediciones in May 1981 under the title Dilogos
con el cuerpo.

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 28 J. Ann Duncan

as elucidation of a mystery
flash of brilliant light and
momentary fulfilment and
and colours, as well as the
Seligson's work, but partic
gios y otras voces, where the drama unfolds almost exclusively
through these images, rather than action or analysis of thought or
feeling, as is appropriate in the symbolical world of dreams.
However, there is slightly more surface realism in this volume than
her others; for instance we get several concrete details about the lives
and domiciles of the characters in the first three stories; they have
names, occupations, friends; there is a plot and even an element of
suspense in two and a chronological development in the first; a leg-
end is interpolated in the fourth. But the author was obviously not
setting out to write stories, however beautiful or entertaining, or to
provide psychological realism (although the book does offer shrewd
and moving studies of childhood and adolescence).
This book too is primarily about the individual's search for identi-
ty through dreams and sexuality. Then, beyond this, the individual's
discovery of a deeper personal meaning through a fusion of the self
in the timeless collectivity of the group or the couple.
The theme is differentiated in the four texts by its presentation as
the incorporation of the dreams and fantasies of childhood and the
peer group ("Por el monte hacia la mar"), the longing for love in
youth ("Distinto mundo habitual") and adolescence ("Un viento de
hojas secas"), the exploration of an adult relationship ("Luz de
dos"). In all the stories the individual is part of a landscape or an
environment, a subjectivity defined by their participation in the
world of objects and sensations, in the four elements, as well as a
psyche composed of unavowed or unfulfilled aspirations and fears.
All the stories recount an attempt to merge dream and reality, the
supernatural and the mundane, and an attempt to find a meaningful
pattern in experience felt as chaotic or enigmatic. All express a con-
flict between the wish for knowledge and annihiliation, vitality and
stasis, affirmation and negation and all express anguish at a sense of
separation or solitude and a desire for fusion and totality - the
search for the ultimate unity of the eternal androgyne: "hoy he de
buscar al ser que mi sueo ha inventado, un sueo que se opondr a
la trivialidad engaosa y violenta de la vida diaria" ( LD 38).
The first story, "Por el monte hacia la mar", is a nostalgic evoca-
tion of the world of childhood, with its rivalries and frustrations as
well as its moments of magic. Independently, the four brothers feel
drawn to return to the scene of their childhood and the text is to
some extent their collective reconstruction of the past, irredemiably

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 29

destroyed by weeds, ghosts and war - perhap

deaths, because the distinction between realit
and the living is as tenuous in this narrative as in Rulfo's Pedro
Pramo. "Aqu no se sabe, as a simple vista, quines son y quines
no son fantasmas" ( LD 25), says Rafa, the dreamer of the family, the
pursuer of fantasmas, also the one associated with the naming of
people and objects, the desire to descifrar and to testify to their
dreams and life through literature. "Si al menos pudiera sacarse una
buena historia de todo eso" ( LD 23), he says when the narrative
passes to him from his youngest brother, who narrates the opening
section.
The main theme which emerges from this apparently random
series of reminiscences and impressions is that of the desire to grasp
dreams and longings, to bring imagination into reality, to understand
the hidden impulses of mankind, through the evocation of a child's
world, where they are perhaps most intimately part of everyday
experience, albeit a jealously guarded secret from others. The child,
as the butterfly reflects in De sueos, presagios y otras voces, is more
spontaneously surrealistic than the adult; children make less rigid
distinctions between the possible and the logically impossible, the
routine and the magical; this is why the butterfly seeks the company
of "el nio morador de los espacios onricos" ( SPOV 31), in spite of
his cruelty, and Rafa talks of his "necesidad de lo maravilloso. Vrti-
go de la metamorfosis: representar todos los papeles y adoptar todas
las formas de la realidad" ( LD 28).
The second story, "Distinto mundo habitual", is at first sight quite
different. The nostalgia and sense of wonderment is replaced by a
more detached and analytical tone in which apparently straightfor-
ward realism is interwoven with an increasing sense of mystery.
Obsession and fantasy play a dominant role here as in the other sec-
tions of this book, but the obsession is more inward looking and
claustrophobic, represented by the setting, almost exclusively in-
doors, focusing on the presence of a caged bird (an image which
appears fleetingly in the first story but is here central) and the furtive
act of spying on some one through a window, as opposed to the
importance of the sea, the woods and the mountains in the other
stories, which are all bathed in intense luminosity, whereas this one
takes place mainly in shadow, until the end, when the light becomes
intense and wounding.
The story is not without its charm and cleverness: a young painter,
longing for love and the ideal woman, becomes instead fascinated by
an old woman and her grey parrot. He spends all his time watching
her through a pair of binoculars until he finally enters her flat, dis-
covers that she has been expecting him, that the photos she shows

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30 J. Ann Duncan

him and the stories she tell

watched from his garret by
parrot greets him by his nam
The firmness of the narrativ
are unusual in Seligson, but th
ness of the events, while th
ter, of realisation of a dream,
dreamer, and of the fusion
fantasy are leitmotifs which
De Sueos, presagios y otras
The anguished search for l
encounter which is the fulf
destruction, is again central
secas". The protagonist here
dream of bright light, tree
turns into a skeleton, and b
order to discover the latent
strongly with certain eleme
plenitude by the sea leads to
tion and sensual satisfaction
dream, is immediately follo
seduced in the forest by a gir
a waterfall.) He acts on imp
images of his dream, which
and light, integrating himself
setting. He is not free, but
as reliving the eternal dram
sexual act does not represent a fusion of opposites, a conscious
attempt to create something higher than the two incomplete beings
involved, but a Narcissistic embrace. Two halves of an ideal have not
been united here; there is simply an ephemeral satisfaction of the
senses, a recognition of the sinister reflection of the darker side of
oneself, a duplication instead of complementation.
The eponymous section of Luz de dos which occupies about one
third of the volume bears the least resemblance to a short story. It
does not have the narrative thread of the two shorter texts, nor yet
the note of psychological and descriptive realism in the first section.
Instead it accentuates the note of nostalgia, wonderment and an-
guished questioning already predominant in the earlier pages and
incorporates them into a dialogue where the unidentified speaker is
alternately the male and the female lover (the change only becoming
apparent through the variation in the gender of adjectives and pro-
nouns); this dialogue, or collective voice of the couple, finally merges
into the mirror-image of the story of another pair of lovers, separated

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 3 1

from them in time and by the dramatic and t

their story, yet identified with them through
where both couples explore their search for l
their solitude and closeness.
As in the previous stories there is a sense of being caught in an
enchanted spell, of the characters enacting ritual gestures and living
out lives other than their own, while being intensely aware of their
own sensorial experience. The mise en abyme technique, as well as
Seligson's emphasis on the metaphysical nature of the encounter,
transforms what could be no more than a moving evocation of pas-
sion (aesthetically and emotionally satisfying but without real depth)
into an universal human drama, giving tangible form to the need to
descifrar, to unravel the mystery of another person's impenetrable
world and the strangeness of one's own experience, to give perma-
nence and totality to fragmented moments of beauty.
The same urge to discover signs, to form a synthesis from the
world of dispersed phenomena, as well as to record its beauty, are at
the basis of the next work, De sueos, presagios y otras voces. So too
are all the other leitmotifs in her work; in particular a preoccupation
with fugacity on the one hand, and infinity and eternity on the
other, with memory and the notion of a collective unconscious in
which the characters participate. An obsessive journey or quest and a
search for identity is central to many of the texts and the protago-
nist, if human, is nearly always a pilgrim, student, exile or outsider.
This volume is Seligson's most esoteric, although not without nar-
rative interest. Many of the Sueos are incantations or prose poems,
rather than stories, and what chiefly characterises them is, as the title
suggests, a dreamlike quality and the attempt to discover "voices", or
expressions, for various phenomena. The physical world is intensely
present, yet there is something supernatural and distancing about its
very vividness; the translucent colours which saturate most of the
texts are brighter than those in everyday life; the light is a deluge of
luminosity, a feast of irridescence or a dramatic play of moonlight
and darkness; archetypal figures make strange, ritual gestures; there
are few sounds, but those which are mentioned tend to be haunting,
to be experienced as prophetic utterances or felt to contain a mes-
sage, like the insistent olfactory impressions. The atmosphere has the
immediacy and at the same time unfamiliarity of the dream world,
its emotional directness and its defiance of the laws of logic.
In all the "sueos y voces", as in Dilogos con el cuerpo, an
onslaught of visual and sensual impressions is transformed into
words, which sumultaneously create and record the universe, estab-
lish a dialogue between us and it, between the physical and the
abstract: "La mirada [...] nombrndola, crendola a travs de la

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 32 J. Ann Duncan

palabra, palabra-espiral, m
cuerpo" (re 4, DC 10). The creative power of language and the
importance of literature as a means of ordering chaos and giving
permanence to the ephemeral is more explicit here than in most of
Seligson's work and it is particularly crucial in the Presagios. This is
the most dense and complex section of the book, although it only
occupies about ten pages. As the titles of each section suggest ("Pre-
sagio de S. Jorge, de Orfeo y Eurydice, de Electra"), it is not the
myth itself which forms the subject, but the legendary figures' appre-
hension of their myth. Part of the charm for the reader comes from
the irony implicit in this novel viewpoint, so that the usual rles and
motives appear disquietingly different.
In the "Presagio de S. Jorge" the knight is searching for love,
awaited by the damsel, who has tamed the dragon and keeps him
under a spell, so that St. George may fulfil their destiny by endlessly
re-enacting the killing of the dragon. But none of them find fulfil-
ment in the mere repetition of this ritual action and St. George,
accompanied by the dragon, leaves the damsel so that he can break
the stasis of the spell and become a real knight errant. However,
deprived of the magical unity formed by their timeless drama, the
dragon ceases to have a rle and flies away; all three are finally left
alone and still searching for their destiny.
Likewise Orpheus and Eurydice have fulfilled their dream and
perfection leads to stasis, so it is only through the destruction of the
lovers that their love can be preserved from the ravages of time,
intact: "el amor es la nostalgia de una forma desaparecida"
(PSOV 54) they realise. Again the lovers are condemned to be eter-
nally separated and eternally seeking for reunion.
These themes of searching for identity, interrogation of memory
and yearning for love are similarly fundamental to the "Presagio de
Electra". The Electra myth is even less important here than the
myths alluded to in the previous presagios; what is significant is
Electra's awareness of having a preordained rle to fulfil, which she
cannot escape and in which an act of destruction is both necessary as
a purification of her father's memory and as fulfilment of her desti-
ny. Seligson's Electra, not unlike Giraudoux's, is an idealist, with an
overwhelming urge for life, love and integrity (a "loco deseo de luz y
de vida" (PSOV 64), which is fated to destroy those around her,
who have made compromises with an imperfect existence.
The three presagios differ in tone and do not at first reading seem
to have much in common with each other or the rest of the volume,
yet on closer examination they can be seen to occupy a central
position in Seligson's work. Beneath the irony provided by the unex-
pected angle from which a familiar myth is considered, the character-

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 33

istic nostalgia is a central and unifying forc

characters is yearning for love, searching for a
they have either never known except in dre
having lost; for all of them, memories and
repetition and they must break a spell which im
the strong pull of the present moment but
and know that their destiny as righters of
destruction of the dream, of the unreal world
live; they all annihilate a couple or unit and
nal exile and loneliness.
The poignancy of their sense of loss is accentuated by their lucidi-
ty and their helplessness; they know that their search is endless, their
gesture futile, but they cannot exist unless they accomplish the act
destined for them from time immemorial; an act which defines them
and is therefore necessary, since they belong to their legend. The
meaning of their life has nothing to do with happiness but concerns
the lucid assumption of their place in a mobile chain of events. They
are not in this unusual or condemned to greater suffering than other
humans; the more ordinary mortals in Otros son los sueos and Luz
de dos, for instance, are also condemned to seek but not to find,
although the hope of finding gives the quest its meaning. This is
simply, to Seligson, the human condition.
This mystical dimension is fundamental to all her writing but it is
important to remember that the real charm of De Sueos, presagios y
otras voces (and an important part of the author's intention) lies in
the imaginative and intuitive entering into the possible experience of
the protagonist, leading to the recreation of the synthesis of a world
which is multifaceted, composed of the perceptions and different
ways of being of all the things around us, which we normally only
see from the outside, and of the parallel experiences of other people
in the past.
All these themes, and in particular the past echoes of present
experience, the acute sense of exile and loneliness afflicting the
human race in its eternal search for meaning and a collective identity,
reach their most complex and also most positive expression in Mora-
da en el tiempo, which completes and widens the quest begun in
Otros son los sueos. The mosaic of voices and dreams which form
the narrative is given unity and a chronological progression by the
recurrent Biblical allusions and the episodes which adumbrate the
history of the Jewish people, so that the central action is not only a
quest for meaning but also a struggle for survival, through exile and
persecution, and reflects a continual pattern of creation and destruc-
tion. All the characters are pursuing "un loco sueo de evasin y
libertad. Poseer el reino de lo inasible" ( MT 1 1 ) and, more than

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 34 J. Ann Duncan

individuals, they form "la tex

gante" (. MT 46). They act in a
as links in a chain: "Van, vienen
hay memoria de lo que preced
memoria en los que sern de
space and time constantly int
de partida y cada da, tambin
vertical reading is essential in
mirrors another, whether in
Therefore what, on the surfa
level, a text fused with severa
which it frequently alludes. "A
ca lmites" C MT 50) is the joi
Morada does not lack the lyric
more overtly mystical and se
becomes here more structured
nist's awareness in Otros son los sueos of the way in which her
identity is profoundly linked with that of their social and historical
tradition.
The synthetic nature of Seligson's artistic endeavour is then mir-
rored in the thematic structure of her work; although the formal
quality of each volume is different, the themes are identical through-
out and a distinct impression of unity emerges from examination of
them.
Although nostalgia and to some extent anguish provide the pre-
dominant tone of her fiction, an affirmation of the joy of life and
validity of the present moment is equally pervasive. Dilogos con el
cuerpo, for instance, celebrates "las nupcias del ser con el jbilo de la
existencia" (DC 40). This is not really a paradox, since there can be
no sense of deprivation if one did not value what was lost.
It is precisely because Electra is torn by "su sed culpable de vida
[...] que le hace olvidar su misin de odio y venganza" ( SPOV 59)
that she is tragic and human - a mortal protesting against the iniqui-
ty of death, rather than a heroine with a singular destiny. It is less
her father's murder she wishes to avenge than the destruction of the
vitality he represented and which he too was forced to suppress by
sacrificing Iphigenia, an act Electra feels can only be purified through
her own violent protest

"su tarea es odiar, rechazar con violencia cualquier signo de amor y vengar,
en ese cuerpo an vivo, no tanto el crimen contra el padre, como la
insaciable necesidad de gozo que todo l irrada, al igual que el de la
hermana, y que l de ella misma. Esa era su herencia, esa la voz que habra
de acallar" (PSOV 63).

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 35

Her mission of vengeance does not spring fr

but to preserve, from a deep nostalgia for the
hood, shaped by "das redondas como naran
cuyo zumo bebas hasta el ltimo respiro" ( P
For all these protagonists there is however
too absorbed in the present moment, in th
the life of the senses which is always follo
annihilation. Toms (in "Viento de hojas secas
achieves an ecstatic union with the sea and t
cente, trnsito de tibiezas sin nombre" ( LD 67), while it is the
moment when dream merges with reality and he and the girl "se
precipitaban anegados de luz, de calor, de ansiedad" ( LD 71) which
leads to his drowning her in the waterfall "[donde] entraban y salan
arcos luminosos, chispas que el medioda dispersaba sobre el fondo
verde-mar" (LD 71). For it must be remembered that the plenitude
of sensuous experience which is celebrated with such exultant lyri-
cism is nonetheless only an ephemeral reflection of the ideal

"en el estallido de las luces y la embriaguez del instante vivido pareciera

detenerse los tiempos que, un segundo despus, se precipitarn arrastrando
consigo toda la ilusin de los sentidos y de la permanencia" ( SPOV 77).

The beauty of the present and of the world of the senses are never
denied or minimised; the protagonist of Otros son los sueos , for
instance, insists on their charm and validity, and on the conviction
they inspire that our experience is unique

"es imperioso recobrar la vision primera, sentirse nicos e irrepetibles en

esos simples gestos eternos. Quin soy yo? [...] Quiero saber de dnde
provena ese conocimiento tan firme, esa certeza de nuestro estar tan fuera
del va y viene del mar, tan dentro de un punto fijo en el tiempo, de ser el
nico en un sinfn de correspondencias. Nosotros hacamos a la noche, el
mar, y no porque lo pensramos, sino porque estbamos ah" (OS 38 y
40).

But this affirmation of the worth of the individual entails the accept-
ance of one's antecedents and in giving roots to one's present by
exploring a past that goes back further than one's own life and
memories

"Hoy es necesario volver ms atrs an del propio pasado, ms all de toda

memoria personal [...] no hacemos sino repetir [...] los mismos gestos, la
espera trs la mscara" (OS 36 f.).

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 36 J. Ann Duncan

The individual is only a mask

figures, all reflecting the Idea b

"Tus ojos buscan, a travs de los mos, la imgen perfecta de lo que

quisiramos ser y retener fuera del tiempo. El deseo es el mismo, el impul-
so tambin, lo que vara es el rostro, la figura, la luz, el momento [...] en
que creemos realizado el encuentro" (OS 37).

To live only in the present, unaware of one's past, is to be exiled

from one's purpose, which is why the protagonist of Otros son los
sueos needs her journey into herself in order to establish a base for
her future, before she can reject dreams and live firmly in the pres-
ent. She tells her husband "no quiero recordarte, quiero vivirte"
(OS 57) and she declares at the end "Otros son los sueos" but she
first has to come to terms with her dreams in the unreal moment and
space represented by the train journey, when she is temporarily iso-
lated from her normal context.
Like the scholar in "Sueos de la flor" she made the mistake of
trying to seize life in a vacuum and to chase chimera at the expense
of lived reality: "La flor pues era la imgen perfecta [...] sin presen-
tes, pura confluencia atemporal de espacios abiertos. As fue como
recurri a los sueos" (SPOV 17). But, as the flower itself declares in
the later "Voz de la flor" it is more a question of seizing time as
movement, as a series of continual presents, than of making it into an
abstraction: "Quera comprender, pero comprender es detenerse, y
no es posible vivir y detenerse al mismo tiempo, pues vivir es movi-
miento" (SPOV 70).
The problem, already explored by Proust, is to experience simulta-
neously the past as it then was and the present (which inevitably
modifies the past); to fuse two states of mind or perceptions into a
composite reality, enriched by the awareness of the difference be-
tween them. This is impossible in the normal course of events be-
cause the past and the present are not totally separate states, like
snapshots, but merge gradually and continually into each other,
within our consciousness. However, Seligson's stress on time as move-
ment and as continuity leads her characters to affirm that they do
not wish to recapture the past as it was (the ambition of Proust's
narrator) but to decipher the hidden reality of signs which will ena-
ble them to grasp intuitively "el movimiento de la vida, su ritmo, su
cohesin, [que] nada tienen que ver con el sueo" (LD 50). They are
seeking for "un recuerdo sin nostalgia, fuera de nosotros y en noso-
tros mismos, sin pasado" (OS 32). Life is seen as an essentially
dynamic process; the nymphs kill Orpheus because he is

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 37

"embebido en la muerte sin morir, viviendo sin est

punto invariable del Tiempo. Quiz por eso, conmov
devolverle al paisaje su movilidad, al tiempo su fluir y a la palabra sus
vibraciones" (SPOV 54).

In Morada en el tiempo a whole race is driven by the anguished

knowledge that "el futuro est presente y no puede postergarse,
intil prevenirse contra la desgarradura irrevocable de un hoy que se
hace pretrito, de un ayer que ya se olvida" ( MT 93 ). It is this
mobility which all conscious human beings must try to apprehend, as
a developing whole, not as a series of presents isolated from their
origin and goal, nor yet as a past which can no longer evolve. Proust
also believes this, but because he is concerned with existence as well
as essence, with the psychological reality of the individual, he is
desperately anxious to rediscover and preserve the past as it was, at
the same time as being aware of the fluid nature of time, which
continually transforms people and perceptions. More mystical, Selig-
son shifts the emphasis from the uniqueness of the individual to the
collective significance of experience; human anguish, and salvation,
lie in trying to fathom the mystery of

"un destino frgil y precario que busca inscribirse en una aventura ms

vasta que la propia existencia de esos seres que, trs la mscara, buscan e
interrogan" ( SPOV 24).

Electra is pursuing "un destino que tal vez no sea el tuyo, ni siquiera
el mo, sino el de toda nuestra estirpe" ( SPOV 57), and this is why
she must accomplish her task of vengeance and abolish nostalgia
through a reunion with the past of her inheritance, beyond that of
her own memories

"he de buscarte. Y no porque pretenda formar parte de t, continuar en tu

canto alguna nota interrumpida, sino porque en tu impulso al engendrar-
me, todos estos jirones de nostalgia y deseos contenidos se vinieron como
un sollozo a mi conciencia, desterrndome de mi misma" ( SPOV 56).

Seligson's characters are ceaselessly engaged in trying to make sense

of their enigmatic experience, to decode the underlying pattern
which they are convinced exists: "el mundo y los seres se rigen por
una sucesin que nada tiene que ver con lo imprevisto o el descono-
cido, un orden cuya ley no se rompe impunemente" (OS 13). There
is Constant mention of the need to descifrar; all the characters are
involved in the realisation of a dream that will provide a revelation of

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 38 J. Ann Duncan

their destiny; they are all

donde cree se encuentra la
nombre" (05 21 f.), and Sueos, presagios y otras voces closes
appropriately with the words "voy en busca de mi sueo", spoken by
the symbolical figure of the caminante, the traveller. Far from being
chimera, then, these dreams indicate the hidden meaning of our lives
and as such need to be understood and integrated into our actual
experience, rather than relegated to a world of fantasy. It could be
said of all of them that they are "el sueo de un soador despierto"
(S/W 36).
The ideal is characterised by a total integration of dream and
desire, nostalgia and aspiration in present fulfilment

"En ese presente nada est por descifrar y todo vibra colmado en la prome-
sa de su realizacin: el deseo y el sueo de la vida forman una imgen
nica" (SPOV 45).

Moreover, dreams are part of a collective experience, linking the

individual both with their cultural tradition and with other people in
the present. "Me he soado en tu sueo" says the wife (OS 69) and
Electra declares "tus deseos me llegaron a travs de un sueo milena-
rio - te busco en mis propios deseos" ( SPOV 56).
This multiplicity of identity throughout the ages and the existence
of a shared consciousness is behind the many shifts of narrative voice
in these texts. In Otros son los sueos the narrative shifts from first
person to third continually, incorporates the voice of Helose and
that of the spouse; in Luz de dos the four brothers in the first story
have a collective identity transcending their marked differences,
suggested by the varying identity of the first person narrator. In the
eponymous section of this volume the narrative is mainly presented
as a soliloquoy addressed to an unnamed tu, who is at times the
woman and at times the man, so that the lovers' experience is con-
veyed as that of the couple and it merges, at the end, in the story of
that other couple in Medieval times. In many other texts identities
merge and reality fuses with fantasy to the point that distinctions
between characters or planes of reality are no longer clear; as with
Borges, we are in a world of multiple identity and simultaneous time,
where conventional distinctions of chronology and personality have
been abolished. This is particularly so in Morada, where the shadowy
characters, whether named Biblical figures or generic personages ( el
ciudadano, el hombre, el mensajero ) are all evidently symbolical
aspects of the search rather than individuals.
Any life, or narrative, is therefore continuous: "una historia sin
principio ni fin" ( SPOV 46). The literary act is important for its rle

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 39

in the vital activity of deciphering the universe

naming them, but it is also the means whereby w
to the individual is preserved and at the same
being integrated into a wider spectrum. "Habr
historia, nuestra historia, y la de todos, la cr
ble ronda de gestos, sentimientos y deseos" (O
dominance in Seligson's work (as in that of all
the images of Narcissus and the mirror. "El
origen" (OS 111) is the characters' hope. The
never being solely oneself but always being lin
the common search for the Ideal, of which all
tions.

"Y la respuesta fue el espejo, el horizonte abrindose

mar dilatado al infinito ... su ser transmutado en ms
pregunta que se contempla hacia el futuro y el pretrito en un juego
mltiple y unvoco, actor de un drama dentro del cual habra de aprender
su papel ... fugaz transfiguracin de la unidad primigenia ... despertar de la
memoria a la esencial soledad" (SPOV 77).

The mirror here is not just a passive reflector; it contains the past and
the future; the mirror image duplicates us, could not exist without us
and yet does exist separately, since we are not the image; the mirror
is therefore like the complementary half of ourselves, for which we
are anxiously seeking: "lo desconocido y no obstante intudo, refle-
jado" (SPOV 25). Our duty is to uncover this lost knowledge
through receptivity to signs and relationships

"salmodiar los secretos de un mundo desconocido y prximo al que perte-

necieron y en el que nosotros, de alguna manera, habamos tenido parte
tambin" ( SPOV 20).

This nostalgia for a perfection we have either lost or never known

("la aoranza de aquel tiempo irrealizado" (OS 24), becomes most
poignant to us in the experience of solitude and incompletion inher-
ent in relationships when human beings feel, or should feel, closest to
each other.

" Pues no es acaso el despertar despertar a la nostalgia, a la conciencia de

la esencial privacin, del irreparable rompimiento con el ancho cuerpo del
origen? [...] un cuerpo que ha sido tocado hasta el centro mismo de su
ruptura con el centro y que despierta, indefenso, a la luz, y nace para
abarcar la posibilidad mltiple del ser, slo puede despertar a la carencia, a
la incansable busqueda del Otro y palpar, cegado en el reencuentro, idnti-
ca Nostalgia" (TC 10 i., DC 16)

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 40 J. Ann Duncan

The basic inspiration of all Se

poignancy, is the need to ex
fundamentally, solitary and
human endeavour throughout
la dualidad, unificando mater
vital aliento masculino" ( SPO
couple a complete being can (
disparate fragments which co
la penetracin volveremos al o
ce que une a los fragmentos"
this attitude is apparent in t
desire for integrity through t
of the murderer's knife, wo
sexual act.
For it is above all through love that human beings can be merged
with their opposite and linked with their past. The characters are
very conscious that sex alone is not enough ("la magia instantnea
del abrazo perda su pureza", OS 34) and that they are engaged in a
far more urgent and metaphysical search. "Ms all de la tristeza del
deseo carnal, de la separacin que inevitable sigue qu buscaba? a
qu otro orden quera penetrar? " (OS 34).
It is particularly obvious from Otros son los sueos that the indi-
vidual's attempt to define herself can only be accomplished through
recognition of others and of their reality - both the absent and
unknown figures of ancestors and the tangible presence of the
Spouse, who nonetheless remains separate and often incomprehen-
sible. It is not clear whether the encuentro at the end of the volume,
which is presented hypothetically, brings the protagonist any closer
to the biblical figure of the Spouse who walks towards her (in reality
or in imagination) but she has evidently achieved greater self-knowl-
edge through her inner journey, in which she has been reunited with
her Spanish and Jewish ancestry, identified with Heloi'se, the personi-
fication of passion and commitment, with her rle in the couple,
which she had initially been tempted to reject. She no longer wishes
to nourish dreams but to embrace the present with all its imperfec-
tions, aware of the eternal nature of her quest and the improbability
of ever finding answers: "no saba - o haba olvidado - qu era lo
que la vinculaba a ese desarraigo milenario al que perteneca y perte-
necera, aun cuando las razones no las encontrara nunca" (OS 109).
Humans must come to terms with their nature as perpetual exiles
and seekers; attainment of the idyll would result in stasis and we are
subject to time, which is movement. But the fact that plenitude
ultimately escapes us need not be a source of despair, since we can
achieve it momentarily in our own lives and more permanently

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 41

through our communion with mankind, as is

lective historical experience in Morada en el tie

"Despertar de un cuerpo en el despertar de otro cuer

que los defina y otorgue rostro, una larga grieta de
voraz afn de permanencia: anhelo incumplido es la r
en su encuentro con el Otro, incumplido y no obstan
tud alcanzable, nico pago absoluto a la prdida original, restaar de la
ruptura que provoc la huida del tiempo, el escape de la eternidad hacia
un cuerpo a otro cuerpo se restaura el Todo y se remonta el ser a su
principio" ( TC 16, DC 19 f.).

It is in "Luz de dos" that the attempt to recreate the most intimate

experience of the couple, of the human urge to find completion
through a shared quest and ecstasy, already central to the earlier
works, perhaps finds its most positive expression, although the sense
of alienation in the couple and sadness at our inability entirely to
transcend this remains.

"Lo recorr al encuentro de la bsqueda [...] un dolor sin nombre me

arrancaba del mbito luminoso, rompiendo el eje que me una a t en un
sueo de unidad primordial. Supe que oficiaba un rito de resurreccin y
muerte, una forma de resumen de todo lo anterior a mi que me remita a
mucho ms all de todo lo posterior, hasta la vspera del origen tuyo"
(. LD 91).

The acceptance of ritual and repetition is vital to the awareness

which transforms a banal act of love-making into an expression of
the human aspiration to rediscover one's origins and achieve one's
spiritual, as well as physical and emotional potential

"comunin del sabio silencio sin palabras. Slo luz, vida que se derrama y
nos abre, resumidos en un gesto, en una imagen, resumen tambin de todos
los instantes [...] algo de rito y magia hay en la repeticin de ciertos
gestos" C LD 92).

The lovers are all reenacting rituals, personifying the force of love
and the search for the meaning of the world, rather than merely
exchanging pleasure. For the Cabala the sign of man's Fall, of sin, is
the differentiation of the sexes, the fragmentation of the world
which was originally complete. So the attempt by the couple to
abolish contradictions, to re-form a synthesis, represents an attempt
to transcend the human and recreate the divine

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 42 J. Ann Duncan

"Ah nos buscaremos, en el lengu

la sensacin que nos enlaza al Todo
mezquino cualquier clculo tempo
to" (. LD 94).

This then, is what Esther Se

dilogo de los cuerpos" - but
an intellectual and spiritual a
and a quest for understandin
bration of pleasure or cry of
inspired by this "after-taste o
which gives their, and our c
dimension that would be qui
love or incompatibility in marr
Analysis is bound to detract
work, since not only does she
writing is essentially poetic; it is, it cannot be described. Like
Valry's Charmes (with which it has many thematic parallels) it is a
series of carmina, or songs, also a series of spells, to whose enchant-
ment we submit, in whose dazzling light and sensuous beauty we
bathe, which we experience, rather than approach critically. As with
Valry, the central idea is evoked through the words and images, is
inseparable from them, so that each work must be seen as a develop-
ing pattern, as a whole.

RESUMEN

El lirismo y la ternura de la prosa potica de Esther Seligson, l

belleza y la intensidad de las imgenes hechizan de inmediato al
lector quien, sin embargo, no llega tan fcilmente a comprender las
intenciones del autor. Queda perplejo ante lo inusitado de la forma
de esas obras, que no pertenecen a ningn gnero establecido y
tampoco tienen voz narrativa consistente o identifiable; la cronolo-
ga como la identidad es confusa y mltiple y la fantasa se mezcla
con la realidad concreta sin que la distincin sea clara. La flexibilidad
de la forma no responde a un deseo de innovar por s, sino al esfuer-
zo de encontrar un modo para expresar una experiencia que no es en
nada lingstica, siendo mstica y sensual. La bsqueda literaria de
palabras y de imgenes para definirla y recrearla corresponde a la
bsqueda metafsica para descifrar la vida.
La obra entera de Seligson constituye un interrogante al misterio
de la vida, un esfuerzo para captar la esencia y el significado de lo
fugaz, para descubrir la permanencia y la unidad subyacentes que dan

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 Nostalgia for the Unknown 43

sentido a los fragmentos dispersos del mundo

sensaciones. Todos sus personajes estn motiv
que viene de la nostalgia por lo perdido o tal
una felicidad y una perfeccin que vislumbra
que en los sueos. Lo buscan en lo onrico, en
subconsciente, en el mundo de los deseos y d
reemplazar la pluralidad del mundo fsico por
tual y, sobre todo, quieren trascender el aisl
que slo recobra su plenitud integrndose en
tradicin cultural.
El "dilogo de los cuerpos" que forma la base de la obra de Esther
Seligson y que celebra con un lirismo intenso el mundo de las sensa-
ciones no representa sino la tentativa de establecer otro dilogo - el
de las palabras con las sensaciones, unidas por un proceso de creacin
mutua, y el de lo efmero con lo permanente. La bsqueda del indivi-
duo se integra as en la historia universal, en el drama eterno de la
humanidad, exilada del paraso que nunca conoci pero siempre
anhela.

ABBREVIATIONS

DC Dilogos con el cuerpo. Mxico: Artfice ediciones, 1981.

LD Luz de dos. Mxico: Mortiz, 1978.

MT La morada en el tiempo. Mxico: Artfice ediciones, 1981.

OS Otros son los sueos. Mxico: Los nuevos valores, 1973.

SPOV De sueos, presagios y otras voces. Mxico: UNAM, 1978

( Cuadernos de Humanidades, 10).

TC Trnsito del cuerpo. Mxico: La mquina de escribir, 1977.

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