SOURCE: "A Parody on Literariness: Seis problemas para Don Isidro Parodi," in Dispositio, Vols. V-VI, Nos. 15-16, Otoño, 1980–Invierno, 1981, pp. 143-53.

[In the essay below, Cossio claims that Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi parodies literary convention and the reading and writing processes on several levels. Cossio also examines how this work is influenced by other literary texts and historical events and figures.]

In 1942, H. Bustos Domecq was born in Argentina and immediately published his first book, Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi. Far from being supernatural, this amazing happening was the natural result of the united effort of two well known writers already engaged in the discovery of a "brave new world": Tlön. In order to find it, both Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges investigated whether "The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia" had or did not have the pages on "Uqbar." After such a detection related by the latter in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" they collaborated in the "revelation" (creation?) of a fecund "polymath" (cryptographer) called Honorio Bustos Domecq whose biography appears in the first two pages of his own book, as the transcription of "la silueta de la educadora, señorita Adelma Badoglio." Through it, the reader becomes acquainted with Domecq and learns that he was "in fact" born in Pujato (Province of Santa Fe) in 1893, and that he had accomplished several literary deeds. One of these, his reading in the "Centro Balear" of his "Oda a la muerte de su padre" by Jorge Manrique, is worthy of mention, since such a feat clearly shows the kind of author the reader is dealing with: a writer who always tells the truth, not his truth but the others', a plagiarist.

In an interview with Victoria Ocampo, Borges explained where the name Bustos Domecq came from: "Creamos de algún modo entre los dos un tercer personaje, Bustos Domecq—Domecq era el nombre de su bisabuelo, Bustos el de un bisabuelo cordobés, mío—y lo que ocurrió después es que las obras de Bustos Domecq no se parecen ni a lo que Bioy escribe por su cuenta ni a lo que yo escribo por mi cuenta. Ese personaje existe, de algún modo. Pero sólo existe cuando estamos los dos conversando." Not only do these words elucidate the origin of the name and the intermittent existence of the character, but they also point out the dialogical structure of the text under study. It starts with the sentence "We transcribe…." The use of the pronoun of the first person plural is ambiguous, since it can be understood as a merely rhetorical device used by the pseudo-author instead of the "I" or as a direct statement made, at this moment and only here, by the two actual authors united in the "we." Yet, the we is not a being but a written represented signifier, whose meaning lies in the writers and readers' discourse which keeps only the trace of their presence—their way of writing (of reading). On the other hand, "to transcribe" means to write down something that has already been written. This "already written" consists in Domecq's biography and bibliography given through the sketch of Miss Badoglio. Thus, from the very beginning, a dialogue of a dual nature is set up: it is carried on between the present text and that of the educator, and between writer(s) and reader(s). The latter will never know who is writing because there is not a subject or a "real" referent behind the text.

Bustos Domecq, the result of an act of talking (of a dialogue), is a chain of signifiers that, moving from one place (Bioy's) to another (Borges'), becomes the representation of speech in writing. As a signifier (sign-vehicle), this proper name stands for two real writers as well as for the fictional ones who appear in the text; as a signified (cultural-unit), it is the paradigm of the detective: Parodi/Parody (in Spanish, Parodi/Parodia). Thus the actual authors can no longer be identified as subjects (Selves?) but as the written signs which represent them in the mode of a signified absence—Bustos Domecq. This name is simultaneously a pseudonym (pen name), a pseudo-author (a parody of ownership), a character (narrator), a text ("a bio-graphy," "a writing without [actual] referent") and the first cipher (as both a concealment of meaning and a nonentity) of the riddle that Seis problemas poses to its reader(s). Such a riddle, however, cannot be solved till the questions it consists of are formulated. I attempt to deal with the problems of deciphering and interpreting that this formulation raises by analyzing the characters, the arrangement of each one of the stories, and the organization of the text as a whole.

The impersonal and omniscient narrator introduces the characters who go to Parodi's cell, records the dates of their visits, and reports Parodi's thoughts and attitude: "El 5 de septiembre, al atardecer, un visitante con brazal y paraguas entró en la celda 273. Habló en seguida; habló con funeraria vivacidad; pero don Isidro notó que estaba preocupado." Those characters who call on Parodi are oppressed by the problem of a crime. Whether innocent or guilty, they give the detective an account of the events in which they have been involved, acting as narrators for their own sake, their desire to be extricated; whereas Parodi, the imprisoned detective, tells his stories (the story of the crime) to them for the sake of truth. An exchange of narratives and a transformation take place in each problem: the sender of the first narration becomes the receiver of the "real" story sent by Parodi, who is a born storyteller.

According to Walter Benjamin, the storyteller is either a man "who has come from afar" or one "who knows the local tales and traditions" ["The Storyteller," in Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn, edited by Hannah Arendt, 1969]. Parodi is both. Having worked as a barber, he heard a lot; being outside of worldly time and space as a prisoner, he has been able to draw experience from his boredom ("the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience"). He is a good listener of tales and retells them showing "orientation toward practical interest," "having counsel for his listeners," and respecting the criminal when he is of a "sturdy nature." This is evidenced, in "Las previsiones de Sangiácomo," by the following commendation: "A Sangiácomo viejo lo agrandó el odio. Se formó un plan que no se le ocurre ni a Mitre. Como trabajo fino y de aguante, hay que sacarle el sombrero." Like a traditional storyteller, the detective begins his stories with "a presentation of the circumstances in which he himself has learned what is to follow," interweaving his own experiences and insights with the events of the crimes: "Los de la policía, que son muy noveleros, no descubrieron nada … Pero yo, de tanto estar a galpón, me he puesto muy histórico y me gusta recordar esos tiempos cuando el hombre es joven y todavía no lo han mandado a la cárcel y no le faltan tres nacionales para darse un gusto."

Unlike Parodi, the visiting narrators report events that perplex them. Although they narrate what they have witnessed, still they do it from their own biased and peculiar standpoint. In their narrations, they themselves are the heroes, the protagonists, while the others are merely secondary figures. Another transformation follows when after having told their stories they listen to Parodi's. Just as their function changes from that of sender to that of receiver, so does their role shift from that of hero to that of dupe; and, conversely, the marginal figures become the leading characters—protagonists or antagonists—of the story of the crime as told by Parodi. Unmasking and fitting them all in the actual role they played in the criminal drama, the detective unfolds the "right" story, which is a summary of the "wrong" one, a reconstruction in the present of what "really" happened in the past. Hence most of the tales are constituted by two scenes: in the first one, the enigma is formulated (by the narrators) and, in the second, disclosed (by Parodi).

Two of the problems, however, are composed of more scenes and may, at first sight, seem to follow a different pattern. Textually divided into five parts, "El dios de los toros" formally consists of the presentation of a false enigma (snare in the first part and delay in the second), the formulation of the true enigma (narration of the crime in the third part and of the happenings surrounding it in the fourth), and the solution (disclosure in the fifth part). On the other hand, "Las previsiones de Sangiácomo" contains two enigmas instead of only one. Although it is textually split into six parts, it is formally composed of the formulation of the first enigma (narration of Pumita's death in the first part and of the events prior to her death in the second), the formulation of the second one (Ricardo's autobiography in the third part and, in the fourth, the narration of his suicide and the reading of the letter he left to his father, "Sangiácomo viejo"), and the revelation of the mystery one year after its decipherment was accomplished (the relationship between the two enigmas in the sixth part). Just as the other tales dramatize the pattern of formulation and disclosure in two scenes, so do these two make use of it in spite of their textual divisions.

Since the fifth part of "Las previsiones de Sangiácomo" is a delay set by the discourse for the reader and for Montenegro, the receiver of Parodi's revelation, I would like then to pause here for a moment and indicate that this is the only tale in which the (impersonal) narrator not only introduces the characters but appears also as the writer (author/narrator) of the stories. At the end of the second part he explains, in parentheses, how the conversation carried on in Villa Castellammare on the eve of Pumita's death was recounted to Parodi: "(Con bastante fidelidad, Carlos Anglada transmitió a Parodi esta conversación.)" Also, in the fifth part, the narrator briefly notifies the reader that the detective received the visits of the physician and the accountant of Sangiácomo and that their dialogues were long and confidential. This last adjective serves the narrator as a justification for not informing the reader about the content of those conversations—a justification reinforced at the end of the story by Montenegro's summary of what had happened in the year after the mystery was solved. The solution was not revealed because the criminologist, knowing from those conversations that Sangiácomo was on his deathbed, did not want to embitter his last months on earth with lawyers, judges, and policemen. Thus the vindication is not only textual, at the level of the sentence, but also ethical, at the level of semantics.

This way of writing (of reading) demands that the grouping of the characters be made on the basis of the specific action they perform in the narrative. The characters can then be set apart by their function into the following groups: (1) the narrators subdivided into the impersonal narrator (Domecq?), who "writes" the others' narrations, and the identified narrators (proper names), who "tell" the stories to Parodi; (2) the protagonists whose criminal plans and performances are not clear in the narrators' stories but become so together with their role (identity) in Parodi's; (3) the antagonists whose roles and schemes are stated for the first time in Parodi's recounting; (4) the detective whose role is as ambiguous as his name. Parodi, on the one hand, is the traditional detective, the one who puts in order the chronology of the happenings revealing the true identity of the characters; on the other hand, as his name metonymically indicates, he is a parody of the conventional sleuthhound—he is a prisoner. Accused of a crime he did not commit and unable to prove his innocence because of two adverse circumstances (to have owned a barbershop in "el barrio Sur" and to have rented a room to a police clerk who, not wanting to pay the rent he owed Parodi, testified against him), Parodi was then condemned to stay for twenty-one years in prison, living in "the proverbial cell 273." This phrase is repeated so many times that it calls for a special type of interpretation—a symbolic one.

In symbolism, the number 2 signifies conflict or ignorance which gives birth to wisdom; the number 7 indicates expression of conflict or judgment, dream voices, sound, and that which leads all things to their end; the number 3 means solution of conflict or judgment, man organizes the present, foresees the future, and benefits from the experience of the past. Furthermore, the three numbers add up to 12, which is symbolic of cosmic order and salvation. This figure corresponds to the signs of the Zodiac to which are linked the notions of space and time as well as the wheel or circle. Divided by 2, 12 gives 6, which corresponds to the cardinal directions and to the cessation of movement; hence 6 is associated with trial and effort. Curiously enough, six problems are brought to and solved by Parodi. The numerical composition has existed since antiquity, and this text (to some extent at least) follows it. Taking for granted and in its due worth this interpretation, each one of the numbers of his cell represents Parodi: 2 stands for his youth as a "compadrito," 7 stands for his maturation as an imprisoned detective, and 3 for his maturity as a "criollo viejo," as a storyteller. These numbers all together symbolize the mythical time and space, the wheel, in which he lives. In that paradigmatic cell 273, Parodi resides and solves the others' conflicts, not his own. His cell is the place where all the texts (characters and discourses) are united, interlaced or intercrossed. It is the center in which truth is found. But paradoxically, the place of truth is inhabited by a character who is there (and has to be there) because of a lie. Like a Lacanian (but laconic) psychoanalyst, Parodi discovers through the patient's words the true facts that have been repressed; like a semiotician, he decodes the meaning of the pseudocryptic messages (or lies) sent to him by the others, since "every time there is a lie there is signification" [Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, 1976]. Thus Parodi exemplifies the antithesis—truth and lie—that governs the whole text.

In the text, two different codes are at stake: the ironic code (the mixture of many discourses), the characters' farrago, and the historical code, Parodi's possible (though not verisimilar) stories. These codes share with the titles and the dedications of the stories (one of the invariants of this text) the form of a language articulated in denotation (titles) and connotation (dedications). While the titles are descriptive utterances, the dedications are modal utterances. Such a distinction presents two levels of the narrative; the combinatorial operation carried out by them articulates meaning, the possibility of transcoding. The dedications are signifiers, proper names which connote but do not describe, establishing connections outside the hindrance of time; they always refer to another code, to other texts, to the "already written," indicating that the meaning of the stories as discourse (message) has to be found outside the text itself. The titles, on the contrary, head the story which will be told in a logical (irreversible) order; they point up the chronological significance of the enigma—its disclosure is the closure of meaning—relating the beginning (of the story) to the end. Thus, on the one hand, there is an enigma, the narration of it, and the detection: the traditional form of the detective story; and on the other, there is the enunciation of an enigma which is not narrated; it consists in a cultural reference. As such, this enigma calls for another kind of detection, that of literary research.

The first story, "Las doce figuras del mundo," is dedicated to José S. Alvarez. Known chiefly as "Fray Mocho," Alvarez wrote many books portraying the "reality" of his time: Buenos Aires and the mores of its inhabitants circa 1890. Two of his books, Memorias de un vigilante and Mundo lunfardo, describe the habits and language of the national and foreign rogues. Certainly these descriptions have some bearing on Bustos Domecq's text. For one thing, it is not difficult to find in the narrator's characterization of Parodi the echo of Fray Mocho's description of the "compadrito" in Mundo lunfardo. For another, in the Spanish mixed with barbarisms that Domecq's characters use and his narrator writes, there seems to be no difficulty in finding vestiges of the forms of expression (the idiom of Buenos Aires during the immigration wave) that characterize Fray Mocho and his society as recorded in his books. Just as his texts elucidate Parodi's identity, the language (parole) of Domecq's characters, and the narrator's way of writing (style); so does his peculiar biography—a former police functionary turned into a writer who not only used many pseudonyms but also changed his own name from Ciriaco to Sixto for reasons of "euphony"—illuminate hidden levels of meaning in Domecq's act of dedication. For to dedicate the first problem to such an undefined personage is to connote the theme (understood as a question the text poses) all of the problems present, that of identity: where does identity lie?

"Las noches de Goliadkin" is dedicated to the "Buen Ladrón." Crucified with Christ on Calvary along with another, this "Good Thief" repented, like Goliadkin, of his misdeeds before dying. While Goliadkin is the actant of the story, the "Good Thief" is the object of the narrative; that is, the former, the thief in Montenegro's narration, acquires, at the end, the "value" of good through Parodi's recounting of the right story: "El joven, mareado por tanta suerte, tuvo una debilidad—cualquiera la tiene—y se alzó con el brillante … Resolvió dejarse matar y perder el brillante para salvarlo." The "Good Thief," a historical figure, is a subject who has already realized the performance that Goliadkin accomplishes here. Thus this character obtains with his death the quality of being good, the identity of the "Good Thief" whose story is a narrative structure prior to its manifestation: "Las noches de Goliadkin."

"El dios de los toros" is dedicated to Alexander Pope. This poet translated the Iliad and the Odyssey; also he wrote a mock-heroic banter on the foibles of fashionable society, The Rape of the Lock, and a mock-epic, The Dunciad, ridiculing pretentiousness and pedantry. Likewise Formento, the criminal of this story, writes mock-books, sneering at Anglada's, as Parodi explains to the latter: "Quien iba a decirle a uno que don Formento, mozo marica y fúnebre si los hay, supiera reirse tan bien de un zonzo. Todos sus libros son un titeo: usted se manda los Himnos para millonarios, y el mocito, que es respetuoso, las Odas para gerentes…." Furthermore, Formento is trying to reach the mass reader through a popular translation of La soirée avec M. Teste, entitling it La serata con don Cacumen (doubtlessly, a literal and very euphonical translation!). Thus Pope's works make understandable the personality of Formento, the narrator's irony, and the tone of Domecq's whole text—all of them done in Pope's manner.

"Las previsiones de Sangiácomo" is dedicated to "Mahoma." The prophet's life is a commentary on and exposition of the Koran; similarly, Sangiácomo's life is the explanation of the story of the crime. As Mohammed's hegira is the point of departure of the chronology of Islam and a turning point in his life, so Sangiácomo's migration from Italy to Argentina changes his social status and indicates the starting point of this story as Parodi explains: "Dios habla por la boca de los sonsos: en esa fecha y en ese lugar empieza realmente le historia." If the Koran sent to Mohammed supersedes the other prophets' messages, Sangiácomo's evil plan obliterates the highest one—destiny: "Planeó toda la vida de Ricardo: destinó los primeros veinte años a la felicidad, los veinte ulitimos a la ruina. Aunque parezca fábula, nada casual hubo en esa vida." Such a design, pertaining more to a prophet than to a criminal, makes Sangiácomo a forecaster comparable then to Mohammed.

"La víctima de Tadeo Limardo" is dedicated to Franz Kafka. Just as Kafka's life was guided by the desire for self-punishment, so was Limardo's. His inner wish to be hurt and humiliated evinces a parallelism with Kafka's character and characters: "Limardo logró al fin su propósito … Había venido de lejos; meses y meses Había mendigado el deshonor y la afrenta, para darse valor para el suicidio, porque la muerte es lo que anhelaba."

The last problem, "La prolongada busca de Tai An," is dedicated to Ernest Bramah. Ernest Bramah (Smith) wrote Max Carrado's serials, The Wallet of Kai-Lung and Kai-Lung's Golden Hours introducing a Chinese character with his peculiar way of talking "in the English tongue." Bramah's Chinese character is, like Domecq, an author/narrator. In one of his stories, Kai-Lung confesses to be guilty of unwished plagiarism in the following way:

It was with a hopeless sense of illness of ease that this unhappy one reached the day on which the printed leaves already alluded to would make known their deliberate opinion of his writing, the extremity of his hope being that some would at least credit him with honourable motives, and perhaps acknowledge that if the inspired Lo Kuang Chang had never been born the entire matter might have been brought to a very different conclusion.

What Bramah's character, Kai-Lung, quoted above says is representative of the ontological problem of the parallel lives and works (unwished plagiarism) that Domecq's dedications bring about. These connections and correspondences are mysterious, since they point to a cyclical time or to magical correlations which are not clearly stated but only suggested through the literary allusions: the dedications. They hint that not only the criminal follows a pattern already accomplished by somebody else in another context, but also that Seis problemas is a pastiche, as it is ostensibly shown to be in the last story. Because of the deliberate imitation of or reference to previous works and writers, this text lends itself to establish paradigmatic associations between its own version of artistic design and other existent versions, between the identity of its fictional characters and the real writers alluded to. In so doing, the text erases time since the narration does not unfold historically but refers back to an original mystery—identity. Time is annulled. Parodi's recounting of the story does not exhaust its meaning because of the temporal gap between the tale-telling and the story-writing implied by the dedications. Then, again, there are two different narratives: the detective one, which needs no appeal to anything outside itself to be understood, and which ceases to have significance at the time when its outcome is known; and the narrative which is, paradoxically, not narrated but adverted, which cannot be explained by a logical sequence of the happenings but by a mythical (cyclical) time, and which does not stop the process of signification. Following the pattern of the detective story, Parodi's tales attribute identity; however, the concept itself is refuted by the other narrative that sends the narration back to a zone where there is not fixed time or space: mystery is always there. Thus Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi is a paradigm of paradigmatic narratives, a text that joints together two opposite terms and maintains them in play: mystery and reason, eternity and historicism, identity and biography, individuality and likeness, originality and repetition.

In spite of its title, Domecq's text contains more than six problems and is a problem for its readers. It is composed of six stories, an introduction (transcription), and a prologue written by Gervasio Montenegro, one of Domecq's own characters. This means that the division between author and character is artificial. The threshold which separates the writer from the written may, therefore, be precarious, since it is here constituted by a writing. Writing is the (real?) stuff that composes both of them and, being an eternal process, sets up a circularity in which no one occupies a privileged position. Yet, in this art of writing, in this text, it is not so much a question of destroying privileges as of making fun of them. Everything and everybody are presented in such a humorous way that all anguish, whether metaphysical or ontological, disappears leaving its place to a rotund outburst of laughter. Thus this text is, first of all, a parody of the conventional detective stories, though, it follows the same pattern. In her book of detective fiction [The Development of the Detective Novel, 1968], A. E. Murch describes it as follows:

But many distinctive features that had originated in the nineteenth century still persisted—planning the clues and the solution before the rest of the story; giving the explanation in the form of a dialogue between a clever character and one who is less perceptive; presenting the story from the viewpoint of several different characters, of the victim himself, or even from that of the murderer; and particularly the convention of "fair play" between writer and reader.

All these features appear in Domecq's text. There, they are subject to mockery by means of the cracks, the obscenity of themes and language, the topical allusions, the frequent intrusion of the author (through the footnotes), and the exposure of the vices and nonsense of society. If this shows the satiric overtones of the text, the fact that its detective is a prisoner evinces its purpose: to make fun of the tradition, of the literary conventions, by a reductio ad absurdum, a "burla burlando" as Montenegro says in his prologue.

Secondly, this text parodies all sorts of discourse. In the narrative two languages are intertwined: the cultivated or bookish and the uncultivated or vernacular. The former is "spoken" by the characters who are highbrow writers, who, nonetheless, make continuous cultural mistakes such as attributing Gil Blas to Santillana instead of to its actual author Lesage, and who constantly drivel; for instance, they congratulate themselves for having found Parodi in, as if it could have been otherwise, or they compliment the imprisoned detective for having chosen to live in seclusion: "Usted, más sabio, ha elegido bien: la reclusión, la vida metódica, la falta de excitantes." The latter, the vernacular language, is "spoken" by the "compadrito" Savastano, who speaks in lunfardo. Parodi, a "compadrito" before his imprisonment and now an old criollo, knows both the vernacular and the bookish dialects; he mingles them when he wants to mock his distinguished visitors: "Pucha que la carne se vende bien en Avellaneda. Ese trabajo enflaquece a más de uno; a usted lo engorda," he says to Montenegro. Similarly, the narrator utilizes in his "writing" either one or the other according to the characters he introduces. By bringing them up through the description of the clothes they are wearing and using one of the words they usually utter, the narrator parodies the characters and their discourses beforehand; afterwards, they will do it all by themselves. For instance, he introduces Montenegro, a prig who always exercises his French, in this way: "Un caballero, de saco gris, pantalón de fantasía, guantes claros y bastón con empuñadura en cabeza de perro, descendió con una elegancia algo suranée y entró con paso firme, por los jardines." By consisting only of one sentence stuffed with many predicates, the narrator's description is a parody of any serious literary one.

Thirdly, Seis problemas parodies the world of the detective stories where the mystery is always unravelled. In the problems brought to Parodi, the solved mystery turns out to be a reference to another that cannot be brought to a conclusion (Parodi's own problem) or that cannot be elucidated—the strange and enigmatic parallelism between one's life and another's—so that the denouement of each problem is twofold: rational and ontological. Besides, the text begins with Montenegro's prologue in which he lays bare the principle of construction of Domecq's problems: "el planteo enigmático y la solución iluminadora." If we recall that Montenegro is the character who poses the second problem and who appears in the next ones (besides the fifth) as Parodi's helper or, according to his words, as the "true" detective, it is not difficult to realize that from the start the whole text is ironic and parodic through and through. Its cyclical organization supported by the appearance of the same characters not only in the stories but also in the prologue shows that the text is built on fictitiousness, spuriousness. Unlike the rational and truthful detective story, which sets itself to prove to the reader that mystery is an illusion, that there is always a rational, "real" explanation, Domecq's text, ending with the "true" magician's remark about the war ("Muchos hombres están muriendo ahora en el mundo para defender esa creencia"), sends the reader to the "reality" outside the text, to the world of chaos and regulated crime, when he has not yet left the world of order and reason, that of the detective story. The reader is then caught in between two realities, both of which are contrived and paradoxical.

Fourthly, this text is a parody of history. The footnotes that appear in the text are unrealistic; either they do not have a "real" referent (they are written by the pseudoauthor or by his characters), or the referent is false insofar as having died in 1349 he could not have sent a note in 1942: "Entia non sunt multiplicanad praeter necessitate (Note remitida por el doctor Guillermo Occam)." The only thing that refers the text to reality is the dates at the end of the prologue and of the problems. The "real" is written there in italics: "Pujato, 21 de Octubre de 1942." The dates insert fiction in space and time; read in context, they correspond to the chronology of the discourse. The first story was written in December 27, 1941; the prologue, in November 20, 1942; and the text was published in December 10, 1942. Accomplished in a year, the act of writing moved in a circular path, becoming a cyclical process whose first element follows the last. The end of the writing is, in fact, the beginning of the text. As such, the narrative inverts time. Just as writing is a logico-temporal process, so is reading. But the process is here reversed: we start reading what was written last.

Fifthly, Domecq's text parodies the reader's reality and role. He is not reading one text but three. The first text is the one that Montenegro addresses to the reader; this text represents the literal level of the work, its detective nature. The second text is the one that the author/narrator dedicates, addresses to other writers or historical figures (absent readers); this is the semantic text, the hidden argument. In the first text, the dedications precede the narration, subhead the story which will be narrated; while in the second, the same dedications, pertaining to elements that have to do with the whole text, are pervasive but somehow independent. These dedications are allegorical messages, since they have a concealed meaning that transcends the literal one of the stories. The third text is the transcription written by "we." Obviously, it is impossible to demonstrate who is its author and who is its reader. This third text is an assumed one made up of the copy of lineaments, a prelude based on a short motive: the fictitious author. These three texts form Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi whose structure is dialogical: each sender is also a receiver. The we, who sends the first message, is the one who receives the last one: we, the readers. We ourselves, senders and receivers, are as fantastic and fictitious as Domecq because we have also been written. Since we started speaking without knowing the end of the utterance in which we had engaged, we have to accept the task of finishing it, of constructing a second code, a meaningful language, elaborated on the basis of the given one: the "already written." We have then to continue the dialogue by deciphering that first code. Thus the act of reading is preceded by an act of writing, and to write is nothing more than to transcribe, to copy—endless game, infinite tautology.

Sixth and last, by denying the possibility of any privileged position, of any original point of departure, Domecq's text posits itself as that which cannot be detected through rational means or explained through a logical discourse. Once the conveyance of identity has been denied to us, is it still possible to believe that we can possess meaning? Indeed Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi no more parodies any critical (sleuthlike?) undertaking—let alone my own analysis—than it laughs at the countless repetition of the "already said."